This distorted pair of galaxies is called Arp 81. About 100 million years ago, they had a close encounter, and the havoc wreaked by their mutual gravitational interaction resulted ing twisted streams of gas and dust, a chaos of massive star formation, and a tidal tail of debris stretching for a couple of hundred thousand light-years. NGC 6622 (left) and NGC 6621(right) are more of less equal in size. They are destined to merge into one larger galaxy in the distant future, after a mating dance of repeated approaches. The galaxies are 280,000,000 light-years away in the constellation Draco.

Image Credit: NASA