This
Astrobin Debut Object is a pair of interacting spiral galaxies located 220 million light years away in the constellation of Aquarius at a declination of -25 degrees.
The lower right lenticular spiral galaxy is NGC 7284. The upper left barred grand design spiral galaxy is NGC 7285. The combined halo around both magnitude 13 galaxies spans 2 arc-minutes and is about 130,000 light years in width. What a view each galaxy must have of the other in their night skies!
In his
Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the category of Spiral Galaxies with Elliptical Galaxy Companions on Arms. In this case, I believe that the "companion" looks more like a lenticular galaxy than an elliptical.
I love the flow of star streams in this object, arcing around the galaxies and seeming to corkscrew around them. Both galaxies look like they share a common arm on the near lower left of the combined object. The other arm of NGC 7285 wraps for 360 degrees around both galaxies. The faint star stream plume extends down, far below and left of the combined object, for a total length of 400,000 light years.
Several other interesting background galaxies are seen in this image:
- At top left is LEDA 134396, located 800 million light years away. This face-on spiral has a core surrounded by a bluish, off-center ring of star clusters. The bottom half of the disk is much brighter than the top half for some reason. It is 110,000 light years in diameter.
- The super-thin edge-on spiral galaxy to the right is LEDA 785905. No distance estimate is available for this one.
- The wonderful barred spiral ring galaxy to the upper right is LEDA 786141. This galaxy is the “winner”, at just over 1 billion light years away. Like our Milky Way, it is 120,000 light years in diameter.
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