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The 'Cocoon' Galaxy - Arp269., astroeyes

The 'Cocoon' Galaxy - Arp269.

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The 'Cocoon' Galaxy - Arp269., astroeyes

The 'Cocoon' Galaxy - Arp269.

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Description

The image shows what an interacting pair may look like some 40-50 million years after two spiral galaxies pass very close to each other causing a warping of each other. They were probably both typical spiral galaxies prior to the encounter and will eventually coalesce into one giant elliptical galaxy. They are still visibly connected by a trail of stars and there is possibly a semblance of spiral structure visible in the small galaxy.

There are extensive HII regions where active star formation is currently ongoing.

Halton Arp studied this beautiful system. He put it in his 'Galaxies with connected arms' category under 'Double Galaxies'

4490 is mag.10.2 and 4485 is mag. 12.3

The night I imaged this pair was quite poor. It looked reasonable until I started imaging when I realised that the background was very high and there was not much signal getting through the haze. I could only get 120 second sub exposures and gave up after 25 such exposures. Looking at the final result I wish I'd stuck with it and got a little more data!

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The 'Cocoon' Galaxy - Arp269., astroeyes