This
Astrobin Debut Object is a tiny tadpole galaxy located 85 million light years away in the constellation of Ursa Major at a declination of +32 degrees. It is a magnitude 16 galaxy which spans 20 arc-seconds in our apparent view. This corresponds to a length of 10,000 light years.
Tadpole galaxies, also called cometary galaxies, have an unusual structure of a bright star-forming head and a long tail. They are not common to our local universe (0.2% of galaxies), but are more common in the early universe of deep field images (10% of galaxies). They are believed to be young galaxies and one of the building blocks of our universe. This object is also named Kiso 5639, after the Kiso observatory in Japan where many of these tadpole galaxies have been imaged and catalogued.
The ”head” of this galaxy, on the left, is believed to be comprised of a massive HII region. I imaged it with my HII filter and found nothing there. Also, many versions of this Hubble image show a bright red head, while others (like the one here) don’t. So I am a bit confused about the nature and extent of HII in this galaxy.
Note that this tadpole galaxy is not to be confused with
the Tadpole Galaxy, which is believed to be a much older galaxy that was formed from a past merger.
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