This image was taken with a small telescope on Earth. The colorful and sharp-looking stars are all located within our galaxy, the Milky Way.
However, the two galaxies that catch the eye in the photo are located much farther away, at a distance of over 300 million light-years (1 light-year is the distance light travels in one year, approximately 9.46 trillion kilometers) from the Milky Way. The distorted and twisted appearance of these galaxies is due to gravitational tidal forces that occur when the two galaxies come close to each other.
Classified as 'Arp 273', these galaxies appear unique, but in fact, interacting galaxies are commonly found in the universe. A nearby example is the massive spiral galaxy Andromeda, which is known to be slowly approaching our galaxy from a distance of about 2 million light-years.
The distant and unique galaxies of Arp 273 may serve as an example of how Andromeda and our galaxy will collide in the future. In cosmic time scales, repeated collisions between galaxies ultimately result in the merging into a single galaxy where stars are gathered. From our perspective, the bright cores of the Arp 273 galaxies are only about 100,000 light-years away.