Arp 263
ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy
- Glossy metal print
- 12 × 12 in · floats ½ in off the wall
- Dye-infused aluminum.
- Printed in the US. Ships in the US.
The photograph
This is Arp 263, also catalogued as NGC 3239, photographed by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam for the ESA/Webb Picture of the Month released on 27 August 2026. The galaxy sits in Leo about 25 million light-years away, an irregular leftover of an older merger, with blue-white star clusters, red dust, and ionized gas around the places new stars are forming. A bright foreground star in our own galaxy, BD+17 2217, sits near the top of the frame with Webb’s eight-point diffraction spike, and the faint spirals behind it are much farther out.
Taken from James Webb Space Telescope · Sun–Earth L2. 25 million light-years.
The mission
Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera, observing programme 3707, led by A. Leroy, a survey of nearby star-forming galaxies close enough that the telescope can resolve their stars, clusters, and dust. Arp 263 was already in Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies in 1966, listed with the galaxies that show irregular clumps, and Hubble photographed it in visible light in 2023.
The programme is trying to understand how stars form and recycle gas across whole galaxies, and Arp 263 is a useful case because a past merger shook up its gas and left star formation scattered instead of settled into a disk. There are no nearby companions in this frame; the other galaxy may already have been absorbed, or it may have been dark enough to miss.
The metal
Dye-infused into aluminum. A hidden float mount sits the panel ½ in off the wall.
Shipping
Printed to order. Packed rigid, ships in 5–8 days. Free freight over $250.