These two spiral galaxies make a photogenic
pair, found within the boundaries of the northern constellation
Draco. Contrasting in color and orientation, NGC 5965 is nearly
edge-on to our line of sight and dominated by yellow hues, while
bluish NGC 5963 is closer to face-on. Though they seem to be
close and of similar size, galaxies NGC 5965 and NGC 5963 are
far apart and unrelated, by chance appearing close on the sky.
NGC 5965 is about 150 million light-years distant and over
200,000 light-years across. Much smaller, NGC 5963 is a mere 40
million light-years away and so is not associated with the
edge-on spiral. Difficult to follow, NGC 5963's extraordinarily
faint blue spiral arms mark it as a low surface brightness
galaxy.
