This
Astrobin Debut Object is a trio of galaxies located 90 million light years away in the constellation of Sextans at a declination of +1 degree.
NGC 3023 is the largest galaxy in the image. It is the severely disturbed barred spiral galaxy at left. The magnitude 12.7 galaxy spans 3 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 80,000 light years.
There is a lot going on inside of this galaxy – I particularly like its color. Two grand spiral arms are somewhat evident, although the right side arm is much wider and longer. The region around the core looks like an angry mess.
So what is causing this disturbance? I don’t think it is NGC 3018, the grand design spiral galaxy at right. The data indicates that it is a few million light years closer to us. It appears to have a minimal amount of disturbance – nothing like that of NGC 3023.
Most interesting in this image is the luminous cyan, blue and purple star cloud on the left side of NGC 3023. SIMBAD indicates that this is actually a separate small dwarf galaxy, Mrk 1236, at less than 10,000 light years in diameter. If so, it would be a logical reason for the disturbance of NGC 3023.
I am guessing that star formation initiated by the galaxy interaction is the reason for Mrk 1236 appearing so vivid and bright.
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