Monday Astronomy Picture Ponderings (MAPPs) 2/21/2022

A Cosmic Dance of Galaxies

A pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273 by NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team, pulled by the author from the Astropix collection. The larger, top galaxy is a spiral, similar to our own Milky Way, while the smaller one at the bottom is more elliptical. Both show signs of distortion due to their interactions with each other. Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Welcome back to the Monday Astronomy Picture Ponderings (MAPPs) series where every Monday I pick one of NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) entries from the past seven days to focus on in some way.

A snapshot of a cosmic dance acts out before our eyes. We see the elements of movement, the…