Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Leo (Leo)  ·  Contains:  NGC 3222  ·  NGC 3226  ·  NGC 3227
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Arp 94, Annehouw
Arp 94
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Arp 94

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Arp 94, Annehouw
Arp 94
Powered byPixInsight

Arp 94

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Description

Arp 94 is a system of interacting galaxies in the constellation Leo at a distance of approx 17.3 Mpc, which is not that far as the distance from the earth to the center of our own Milky Way galaxy is 8 Kpc.

Imaging

Imaging this very interesting system presents a challenge in the form of the bright star Sigma Leonis, which is only 50 arc minutes away and can create lots of light streaks across the image (they are also present in Arp’s original plate).

The mono portion of this image was taken while on a astro holiday at Olly Penrice’s excellent dark sky facility in the south of France. The instrument was a TEC 140 APO refractor and an ATIK 460ex mono CCD camera. The color was acquired from my backyard with my 340mm diameter f/3 hypergraph with a QHY 168C OSC camera.

Physics

Arp94 consists of NGC 3227 and NGC 3226. NGC 3227 is a SAB pec spiral galaxy (SAB pec meaning a spiral with tightly wound spirals, with a hint of a bar structure and pec because of the deformation by the interaction with 3226). NGC 3226 which is a E2 pec dwarf elliptical galaxy (E2 pec meaning a fairly round elliptical galaxy, E0 being perfectly round).

Both NGC 3227 and NGC 3226 appear to have active galactic nuclei, as indicated by strong radio and X-ray radiation. An active galactic nucleus is a compact region at the center of a galaxy that has a much higher than normal luminosity over at least some portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with characteristics indicating that the luminosity is not produced by stars alone. The X-ray radiation is explained to originate from the inner regions of a black hole’s accretion disk. This is a hint for the existence of a supermassive black hole (supermassive being somewhere between hundreds of thousands to billions (10e9) solar masses).

NGC 3226 has a low intensity active galactic nucleus. Its active galactic nucleus shows spectral line emission from weakly ionized atoms. The power source of this emission can be attributed to star forming regions or a supermassive black hole. In the case of NGC 3226, no molecular gas (and hence no fuel for star formation) has been detected, so a supermassive black hole in its nucleus is the likely candidate.

NGC 3227 is a Seyfert galaxy. A Seyfert galaxy is one of the classes of galaxies with active galactic nuclei. The distinction between the different classes of galaxies with active nuclei is in their radiation signature. The mass of the supermassive black hole in NGC 3227 is estimated to be in the order of 10e7 solar masses.

Both NGC 3227 and 3226 display no jets, in contrast to other types to active galactic nuclei galaxies like Quasars, Blazars and BL Lac’s.

The gravitational tidal interaction between NGC 3227 and NGC 3226 has produced delicate streamers, which is the main objective to show in this image. The streamers consist of stars and neutral atomic hydrogen (HI) .

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Arp 94, Annehouw