Description
In the direction of the constellation Canis Major, two spiral galaxies pass by each other like majestic ships in the night. The near-collision has been caught in images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and its Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

The larger and more massive galaxy is cataloged as NGC 2207 (on the left of the Hubble Heritage image), and the smaller galaxy on the right of the image is cataloged as IC 2163. Strong tidal forces from NGC 2207 have distorted the shape of IC 2163. The force has flung stars and gas out from IC 2163 into long streamers that stretch a hundred thousand light-years toward the right-hand edge of the image.

From:  NASA Photo Gallery   NASA copyright guidelines