This
Astrobin Debut Object is a
chain of galaxies located in the constellation of Hercules at a declination of +16 degrees. In his
Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the logical category of Chains of Galaxies.
2 large elliptical galaxies anchor this chain, both 0.5 billion light years away. The upper is UGC 10143. The halo of this magnitude 14 galaxy spans 2 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a huge diameter of 300,000 light years. The elliptical at the center of the image, MCG+03-41-051, has a slightly smaller halo. I believe that these 2 galaxies are interacting. The halos appear to be connected, but I am not 100% convinced of that. The face-on spiral galaxy between them could be creating an illusion that the ellipticals are connected. This spiral is about 100 million light years further away from us, so it is not interacting with the 2 ellipticals.
Most of the other galaxies in the image are a significant distance away from the 2 ellipticals. So this isn’t really a true galaxy chain but a line-of-sight alignment of numerous galaxies. A bit disappointing, but still fun to see.
I expanded the framing to include my favorite galaxy in the image, the beautiful grand design spiral galaxy (2MASX J16015198+1547326) at the bottom right of the image.
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