This object is a distorted barred spiral galaxy located 40 million light years away in the constellation of Virgo at a declination of -6 degrees. This magnitude 11.5 galaxy spans 6 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to an actual diameter of 75,000 light years.
Scientists believe that this galaxy is being distorted through gravitational interaction with the elliptical galaxy
NGC 4697, located almost one degree away which corresponds to 600,000 light years.
I love both the integral sign shape of this galaxy disk along with the arcing star streams which emanate from distinctly different portions of the arms. The streams on the left side of the galaxy disk go up while the streams on the right side go down. The barred core is surrounding by subtle pink Ha regions and bright blue star clusters.
The 4 tiny galaxies to the upper right on the Astrobin mouseover are all just over 1 billion light years away. Numerous orange and blue Milky Way stars are seen superimposed over the image.
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