UGC 1810
UGC 1810 is a spiral galaxy located approximately 300 million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda. It is part of the interacting galaxy pair known as Arp 273, where its disk has been tidally distorted into a rose-like shape due to gravitational interactions with its companion galaxy, UGC 1813.
Source: science.nasa.gov
APODs including "UGC 1810"
Peculiar Galaxies of Arp 273
09/01/2025
The colorful, spiky stars are in the foreground of this image taken with a small telescope on planet Earth. They lie well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. But the two eye-catching galaxies in the frame lie far beyond the Milky Way, at a distance of over 300 million light-years. The galaxies' twisted and distorted appearance is due to mutual gravitational tides as the pair engage in close encounters. Cataloged as Arp 273 (also as UGC 1810), these galaxies do look peculiar, but interacting galaxies are now understood to be common in the universe. Closer to home, the large spiral Andromeda Galaxy is known to be some 2 million light-years away and inexorably approaching the Milky Way. In fact the far away peculiar galaxies of Arp 273 may offer an analog of the far future encounter of Andromeda and Milky Way. Repeated galaxy encounters on a cosmic timescale ultimately result in a merger into a single galaxy of stars. From our perspective, the bright cores of the Arp 273 galaxies are separated by only a little over 100,000 light-years.