Photo's description:

VV 705, or Markarian 848, consists of two galaxies that seem to be embracing each other. Two long, highly curved arms of gas and stars emerge from a central region with two cores. One arm, curving clockwise, stretches to the top of the image where it makes a U-turn and interlocks with the other arm that curves up counter-clockwise from below. The two cores are 16,000 light-years apart. The pair is thought to be midway through a merger. Markarian 848 is located in the constellation of Bootes, the Bear Watcher, and is approximately 550 million light-years away from Earth. This image is part of a large collection of 59 images of merging galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released on the occasion of its 18th anniversary on 24th April 2008. About the object Object name VV 705, Mrk 848, I Zw 107 Object description Interacting Galaxies Position (J2000) 15 18 06.34 +42 44 34.0 Constellation Bo tes Distance 550 million light-years (150 million parsecs) About the data Data description The Hubble image was created using HST data from proposal 10592: A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University) Instrument ACS/WFC Exposure date(s) November 13, 2001 Exposure time 35 minutes Filters F435W (B) and F814W (I) Date 24 April 2008 Source http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/16/image/cg/ (direct link) Author NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University) Permission (Reusing this file) Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse