NGC 5297 Spiral Galaxy

About this Image

This interacting pair of Galaxies is situated in the Constellation of Canes Venatici.
Spiral Galaxy NGC 5297 is near to edge-on and has a very small, bright nucleus in a bright central lens shape. It has several narrow knotty spiral arms and dark lanes, plus two faint outer arms. The outer spiral arms show evidence of perturbation by the companion galaxy.

NGC 5296 is a dwarf Lenticular Galaxy which is distinctly elongated towards the neighboring giant spiral, a faint bridge is visible towards NGC 5297. There is much evidence of past episodes of massive star formation, most likely caused by the interaction with NGC 5297. This leads to the classification of NGC 5296 as a Starburst Galaxy. The red shift of both galaxies is about the same, and gives a distance estimate for the pair of 12 million light years.
The faintest background galaxies visible in this image are mag 24.
North is to the bottom left.

See an interesting article of Halton Arp regarding a quasar near NGC 5296: here.

Below you see a crop on the center of the above image in 40/80% size.