Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Virgo (Vir)  ·  Contains:  NGC 4567  ·  NGC 4568  ·  Siamese Twins
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Butterfly Galaxies, KuriousGeorge
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Butterfly Galaxies

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Butterfly Galaxies, KuriousGeorge
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Butterfly Galaxies

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Description

The month of May can be very dark and steady in Julian with a solid Marine layer below 4,000'.

The 19 15-minute L subs used in this image were between 1.6" and 2.6" with an average near 2" in 21.3+ SQM skies.

"NGC 4567 and NGC 4568 (nicknamed the Butterfly Galaxies) are a set of unbarred spiral galaxies about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. They were both discovered by William Herschel in 1784. They are part of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies.

These galaxies are in the process of colliding and merging with each other, as studies of their distributions of neutral and molecular hydrogen show, with the highest star-formation activity in the part where they overlap. However, the system is still in an early phase of interaction. In about 500 million years the galaxies will coalesce into a single elliptical galaxy."

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Butterfly Galaxies, KuriousGeorge