Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Pisces (Psc)  ·  Contains:  NGC 266
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NGC 266, Gary Imm
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NGC 266

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NGC 266, Gary Imm
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NGC 266

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Description

This object is a rarely imaged barred spiral galaxy located 220 million light years away in the constellation of Pisces at a declination of +32 degrees. The galaxy spans almost 3 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a large diameter of 180,000 light years.

This is a beautiful object. The eye-shaped barred core is fascinating to me. Star clusters are visible mid-length along the 2 spectacular arms, which both extend 360 degrees around the core. These arms both contain Vorontsov-Velyaminov rows, identifiable from their angled, line segment nature.

It looks to me like a small unnamed lenticular galaxy to the lower right may be a companion to NGC 266, exerting a gravitational influence on the arm to create separation between the arm and the galaxy.

The small spiral galaxy further to the lower right is 2MASX J00493722+3213548. Faintly visible just above this galaxy is its blue companion.

The bright foreground orange star below the galaxy is the 8th magnitude star BD+31 122.

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