Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Orion (Ori)  ·  Contains:  IC 421
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IC 421, Gary Imm
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IC 421

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IC 421, Gary Imm
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IC 421

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Description

This Astrobin Debut Object is a faint face-on barred spiral galaxy located 165 million light years away in the constellation of Orion at a declination of -8 degrees. This magnitude 15 galaxy spans 3 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a large diameter of 150,000 light years.

Some DSOs reveal themselves easily, like a teenager on Facebook. This one is more like my Facebook profile – it just doesn’t want to show itself to us. I did what I could through processing to bring out some detail.

It is clear that this galaxy has been disturbed by something. The most likely candidate is the small galaxy seen slightly below and to the right, galaxy 6dFGS gJ053200.8-075552. If it is the same distance away as IC 421, it is a small dwarf galaxy at only 15,000 light years in diameter. But if it has passed through the larger galaxy, even that small size could create quite a bit of havoc in the arm structure.

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