Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Camelopardalis (Cam)
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Arp 17, Gary Imm
Arp 17, Gary Imm

Arp 17

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
Arp 17, Gary Imm
Arp 17, Gary Imm

Arp 17

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

This Astrobin Debut Object object, also known as UGC 3972, is a distorted spiral galaxy located 240 million light years away in the constellation of Camelopardalis at a declination of +74 degrees. It spans 1 arc-minute in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 70,000 light years. This galaxy was classified by Dr. Arp into the category of Spiral Galaxies – Detached Segments. I think for Dr. Arp that category was the equivalent of throwing in the towel. I wish he would have been brutally honest and just had a category called Spiral Galaxies - Your Guess is as Good as Mine!

This is a tough one to understand. The two bright areas are classified as 2 different galaxies – PGC 21685 (magnitude 16.0) on the top and PGC 21693 (magnitude (14.6) in the center. These 2 bright areas are connected by bending star streams. But it is hard to visualize what is happening here. I believe that the center bright area is the core of the main object we are seeing. But the bright area above doesn't look like another galaxy core to me - it is much more blue than white, and there is so little signal above, left or right of it. A set of star clusters makes more sense to me, but that still doesn't look quite right.

Comments