This image captures a pair of Messier spiral galaxies located in the constellation of Leo at a declination of +12 degrees.

M95, on the right, is a face-on barred spiral ring galaxy located 32 million light years away. This magnitude 10.5 galaxy spans 7.8 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 72,000 light years. It is the dimmest object in the entire Messier catalog. The structure of this galaxy is very interesting. A meandering dust lane appears just left and below the core. Each of the two main spiral arms starts from the end of the bar and extends almost 360 degrees around. In this process, the arms form an almost exact circle ring in the mid-region. The ring is sprinkled with bright star forming regions. Void areas are seen in the outer disk at the top and bottom of the galaxy. Most interestingly, 2 outer arm fragment arcs have formed, one each on the outside of a main arm, create a pseudo-ring on the outside of the galaxy. The “American football” shape of this outer disk contrasts with the near-circle of the mid-region ring.



M96, on the left, is located 34 million light years away and is slightly brighter and larger than M95. This galaxy has a magnitude of 10.1 and a diameter of 80,000 light years. It appears to us midway between edge-on and face-on. The oval inner section of the disk is bright and is rotated about 30 degrees relative to the orientation of the outer disk. This diffuse outer disk is punctuated by a strong single arm which extends up and right from the core. A dust lane follows this arm up form the core. A distant edge-on spiral galaxy lies behind the upper left edge of the galaxy disk. This edge-on spiral galaxy is about 700 million light years away and is about 3 times the actual size of M96.

These 2 galaxies may have been close enough together in the past to interact with each other to some extent, although I don't see much evidence in terms of extended star streams.