This
Astrobin Debut Object is a galaxy group of 4 NGC objects located in the constellation of Leo at a declination of +13 degrees. The galaxies range in brightness from 12.6 to 15.
Like so many of these “groups”, these galaxies are not interacting with each other and are not in close proximity.
The brightest galaxy, at top center, is NGC 3020, which is 70 million light years away. It spans 4 arc-minutes in our apparent view. This corresponds to a diameter of 80,000 light years. The structure of this galaxy is incredible – I have never seen a galaxy quite like this one. The central white bar is slightly deformed and surrounded by a bright inner ring. The ring is dotted with bright blue star clouds. Emanating from the ring are numerous short arm fragments.
On the right disk of the disk of NGC 3020 is a small orange elliptical galaxy which is pretending to be a companion, but analysis has shown that it is much further away at 2 billion light years. This makes sense to me, since there is not much disturbance of NGC 3020 in the immediate vicinity of the small elliptical.
It is clear that something has disturbed the disk of NGC 3020, but the culprit is not visible to me. It is possible that several bright blue regions in the disk could be dwarf companions.
The edge-on galaxy NGC 3024 is at left center, 100 million years away and 70,000 light years in diameter. At the center of the image is NGC 3019, which is 430 million light years away and 90,000 light years in diameter. At lower right is NGC 3016, 420 million light years away and the largest galaxy in this image in terms of actual diameter (160,000 light years). Other small galaxies are seen throughout the image background.
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