A photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows Arp 283, which is not a single object but a pair of galaxies classified as NGC 2798 (on the right) and NGC 2799 (on the left). Astronomer Halton Arp put this pair in his catalog of peculiar galaxies because they are two interacting galaxies, which means they’re affected by each other’s force of gravity. Arp 283 was compared to a waterspout with stars from NGC 2799 appearing to fall towards NGC 2798 like drops of water. In the distant future, the two galaxies could merge.

About 81 million light-years away from Earth, the Arp 283 pair is one of many examples of interacting galaxies as it’s normal for galaxies that are close in astronomical terms to exert a reciprocal gravitational influence which often is the initial phase of an approach that ends up determining their merger. In this case, there’s a pair of two barred spiral galaxies which, given the distance, may already have become one with a more or less regular shape depending on when the merger took place. However, they could be in any phase of the merger because it’s a process that can continue for hundreds of millions of years, so if a merger has already started, it’s likely to be still in progress, and the resulting galaxy’s shape is still irregular.

The galaxies NGC 2798 and NGC 2799 have been known for a long time, discovered respectively in 1788 by astronomer William Herschel and in 1874 by astronomer Ralph Copeland. Today, the instruments available for observations are far more advanced, and the Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument used three optical wavelength filters in creating this image of Arp 283.

During the approach between the galaxies NGC 2798 and NGC 2799, the stars inside them will attract each other, but probably they will remain light-years away from each other. For this reason, two stars are very unlikely to collide in a galaxy merger. However, a merger is a very important event, and in the case of Arp 283 perhaps we’re seeing the initial phase, so astronomers will continue to follow this pair closely.