Peirce shot this with his Celestron EdgeHD 8-inch telescope from his backyard in Utah. (One of the delights of starting this little feature has been realizing how many of our readers are fantastically talented sky photographers). Our photo today was not shot by the Hubble Space Telescope, however, but by James Peirce, an amateur astrophotographer and reader of Ars. The two spiral galaxies are in the process of interacting with one another, and astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope believe the distinct signs of intense star formation in the nucleus of the smaller galaxy were probably triggered by the encounter with the larger one. In this case, Arp 273 is not one but two galaxies located about 300 million light-years from Earth. It features an astronomical feature known as Arp 273-so named because it was part of an atlas of peculiar galaxies compiled by American astronomer Halton Arp six decades ago. It's November 14, and today's photograph is drop-dead gorgeous. At Ars Technica, we're going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder. We'll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science.
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