Astronomy Magazine – Your source for the latest news on astronomy, observing events, space missions, and more.

A twisted galaxy

Emil Andronic from Hemel Hempstead, U.K.

The unusual shape of NGC 3718 is a barred spiral galaxy with an unusual, twisted shape — likely due to interactions with nearby NGC 3729. Lying around 120 million light-years away, it’s also listed as the 214th entry in Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. This imager took 37⅓ hours of LRGB data with two 8-inch reflectors.