This
Astrobin Debut Object is a pair of galaxies located 130 million light years away in the constellation of Draco at a declination of +78 degrees.
UGC 5600, the top galaxy which is fainter but larger, spans 2 arc-minutes in our apparent view. This corresponds to a diameter of 60,000 light years. UGC 5609 is slightly smaller. Both are at the same distance and look disturbed, but there is no apparent star stream between them.
I imaged this object because both galaxies, from sky atlas images and some other published sources, looked like they could be
collisional ring galaxies, my favorite type of DSO. But upon seeing them in my image, they look simply like disturbed galaxies and not collisional ring galaxies. I say this because of 3 reasons – I don’t see a completely closed ring in either galaxy, the cores seem to be the same colors are the disks, and there is no void in the center of either galaxy.
Although disappointed, I still find them to be fascinating. They are likely disturbing each other – so why is there no star stream connecting them, or even extending outward from either galaxy?
Many galaxies are seen in the background, particularly in the upper right corner of the image.
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