This Astrobin Debut Object, also known as UGC 1775, is a face-on ringed spiral galaxy located 420 million light years away in the constellation of Cetus at a declination of +6 degrees.  This magnitude 14 galaxy spans 2 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 100,000 light years.

In his Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the category of Spiral Galaxies with Split Arm.  

The galaxy structure is fascinating.  I see 3 rings.  The core is surrounded by a small bright oval ring.  At mid-region is a beautiful 3/4 ring with a bright blue section of star clusters in the upper right quadrant.  Finally, a faint outer pseudo-ring surrounds the outer rim.  Something seems to be disturbing this galaxy, what is it?

Looking closely, you will see a small bright white stellar-like dot at 4 o’clock just below and right of the core.  Studies have shown that this dot is a galaxy remnant, at the same distance as UGC 1775.  The studies also indicate that these objects constitute a collision ring galaxy, formed when the small galaxy impacted the larger galaxy head-on.  This collision destroyed the small galaxy and formed the bright formation ring in the larger galaxy. 

To me, this galaxy looks similar to the famous Cartwheel Galaxy collisional ring galaxy.  I have tried to show this in the mouseover.   Both Arp 10 and the Cartwheel have an oval inner ring, a thin bright outer ring, bright star clusters in the outer ring, and galaxy remnants nearby. 

I find it fascinating that Dr. Arp identified Arp 10 as a peculiar galaxy because of its "split arm", which I find to be the least interesting of all of the categories.  Yet, we learn later in time that this galaxy is a collisional ring galaxy, one of my favorite galaxy types.

The small spiral galaxy above and left of UGC 1775 is further away and is not interacting with UGC 1775.  It is located 1.2 billion light years away and is 80,000 light years in diameter.