This
Astrobin Debut Object is a galaxy chain located in the constellation of Virgo at a declination of +7 degrees. In his
Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the category of Chain of Galaxies.
The chain of 5 spiral galaxies snakes down the center of the image. This galaxies are not at the same distance - is a line-of-sight chain. The top galaxy distance is unknown, the next 2 down are 530 million light years away, and the 2 bottom ones are 330 million light years away.
I like the various spiral structures and colors seen in the chain. The largest galaxy is terms of actual size is the yellow edge-on spiral, at 140,000 light years in diameter. The disturbed blue edge-on galaxy below it is a Milky Way size diameter of 120,000 light years.
This image contains 2 Arp objects. That fact alone is not that unusual, since there are 26 Arp groupings which have multiple Arp objects within 1 degree. But for only 4 of these cases is 1 Arp object a subset of another. That is the case here, where Arp 33 (the bottom 2 galaxies) is a subset of the Arp 326 5 galaxy chain. My image post specific to Arp 33 is
here.
The galaxy at the right edge, UGC 8596, is not part of a chain but I included it because I liked its grand design spiral structure.
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