This
Astrobin Debut Object is a small distant chain of galaxies located in the constellation of Aquarius at a declination of -21 degrees. In his
Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the category of Chains of Galaxies.
This object is so obscure that I could find no information on it. In fact, SIMBAD returns the wrong location for it. To find it in SIMBAD, search for the group ESO 601-18.
These look like a series of distant orange elliptical and lenticular galaxies. 6 of them appear in a row, with several others nearby. The chain is about 1.5 arc-minutes long. Although the halos of the galaxies overlap, it is not clear to me that they are interacting since I don’t see much deformation of the star halos. My guess is that they are all part of the same group but that they are too far apart to be strongly interacting.
Although no distance information is available for this object, I think this chain is about 600 million light years away. That would put the largest galaxy at about 120,000 light years in diameter and the smallest at about 50,000 light years in diameter, which in my experience is a typical size range for the galaxies that often comprise these types of galaxy groups.
If you are interesting in seeing other galaxy chains, my Astrobin collection of them is
here.
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