I captured this a year ago, but only had a couple of hours, so I wanted to add some time and see if I could improve on my image. I added two long nights worth, around 14 hours and am fairly pleased with the improvement
https://www.astrobin.com/lcm2b3/C/Still no where near as good as Dale's (
@Dale Penkala ), but it is hard to compete with almost double the aperture.
The larger galaxy, UGC 1810, has distorted by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, UGC 1813. A blue at the top of 1810 is the combined light from clusters of intensely bright and hot young blue stars.
The larger galaxy in the UGC 1810 has a mass that is about five times that of the smaller galaxy. According to NASA, this unequal pairs such as this, the relatively rapid passage of a companion galaxy produces the lopsided or asymmetric structure in the main spiral. Also in such encounters, the starburst activity typically begins in the minor galaxies earlier than in the major galaxies.
Arp 273 lies in the constellation Andromeda and is roughly 300 million light-years away from Earth. The image shows a tidal bridge of material between the two galaxies that are separated by tens of thousands of light-years from each other.
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