This
Astrobin Debut Object, also known as UGCA 290, is a small dwarf galaxy located 20 million light years away in the constellation of Canes Venatici at a declination of +39 degrees. This magnitude 17 object spans 50 arc-seconds in our apparent view, which corresponds to a width of only 5000 light years.
In his
Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the category of Galaxies with Irregularities, Absorption, and Resolution.
Some sources claim that this object consist of two galaxies, but it looks to me as if there are several bright blue star clusters contained within one galaxy. No separation is seen, plus the object is so small (5000 light years) even for just one galaxy, much less two.
The most intriguing issue here to me is that Dr. Arp was able to resolve the object into individual stars, given that the object is 20 million light years away. I thought that perhaps the "stars" were just artifacts, but I found several partial views of this galaxy from Hubble images and the bright spots in Arp’s image pretty much map to stars in the Hubble image. Still, this is puzzling, given that all of Arp’s other images did not show this much resolution. Perhaps he just had great seeing at that moment. In many of my past Arp mages I have identified issues with Dr. Arp's interpretation of these objects, so I have to give him credit here for a wonderful capture on film of this small distant object.
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