Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Draco (Dra)
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Arp 188 Tadpole Nebula, rdhand
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Arp 188 Tadpole Nebula

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Arp 188 Tadpole Nebula, rdhand
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Arp 188 Tadpole Nebula

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Description

Imaging on 15, 18, 20, 26 and 27 February 2023

Arp 188 (PGC 57129) is known as the Tadpole nebula.  It is 420 million light-years distant – that means that the light that hit my camera sensor stared traveling 170 million years before the first dinosaurs appeared on earth.   The tail is 280,000 light-years long which is almost 3 times the diameter of the Milky Way.  The tail was formed by the tidal interactions with a passing galaxy.  Following its terrestrial namesake, the Tadpole Galaxy will likely lose its tail as it grows older, the tail's star clusters forming smaller satellites of the large spiral galaxy.  PGC 57087 is the larger galaxy near the top of the image.  PHC 57109 is the larger galaxy near the bottom.  Other fainter galaxies can be seen in the photo.

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Arp 188 Tadpole Nebula, rdhand

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