This
Astrobin Debut Object, also known as IC 609, is a distorted spiral galaxy located 230 million light years away in the constellation of Sextans at a declination of -2 degrees. This magnitude 14 galaxy spans 1.5 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a Milky Way like diameter of 100,000 light years.
The beautifully disturbed galaxy disk has 2 interesting rings, as well as a bit of a starstream bar through the center. I find it fascinating that the lower half of the disk structure appears to be very dark, as if it has been obscured by a dust cloud.
In his
Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the category of Spiral Galaxies with Low Surface Brightness Companions on Arms. So where are the companions? Two faint elliptical galaxies are seen below IC 609. The brighter one, at magnitude 18, is 0.7 billion light years away and not a companion. The fainter one is magnitude 20, with no distance estimate available. Neither of these appear to be companions.
Without any visible companions, what is causing the disturbance? Probably a former companion that was absorbed into the disk long ago, but that is just a guess.
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