Behold a galaxy twice the size of the Milky Way!
Our Milky Way is just a spiral galaxy, but NGC 1232 here is a grand spiral galaxy, its diameter twice as long as ours. Everything is bigger in NGC 1232, including the giant satellite galaxy warping it out of shape.
Technically speaking, NGC 1232 is a grand design spiral galaxy, so named of its extremely well-defined spiral arms. But even then, its arms are unusual, as most spiral galaxies like this would have gently curved arms. NGC 1232 has much more sharply bent arms. That’s likely because of the gravitational distortion of its satellite galaxy, the rather unimaginatively named NGC 1232A. While most large galaxies have satellite galaxies - there’s a tiny one orbiting our galaxy just 70,000 light-years away - very few satellites are both so close and so massive.
Click through for the image and more.