NGC 6548 & NGC 6550 (Gary Imm)

NGC 6548 & NGC 6550

This image captures 2 galaxies located in the constellation of Hercules at a declination of +19 degrees. This is the first Astrobin image of this pair of obscure objects. The 2 galaxies are only an optical pair and are too far away from each other to be interacting.

NGC 6548 is the face-on bright lenticular galaxy towards the top of the image. It is about 100 million light years away. Its apparent size to us of 3 arc-minutes corresponds to a true diameter of 90,000 light years.

NGC 6550 is the edge-on smaller spiral galaxy towards the bottom of the image. This galaxy is 3 times further away but larger in true size at a diameter of 120,000 light years.

Note that the NGC number designations above are consistent with the Astrobin labels. However, other reliable sources refer to each of these galaxies by different NGC designations. Amazingly, I have found each of these NGC designations - 6548, 6549, and 6550 - assigned to each of these galaxies in different sources.

The attention getter is the bright top galaxy, but I found 2 aspects of the bottom galaxy to be extremely interesting. First, the numerous dust lanes in this galaxy appear to be distinct and well defined. It is too bad that this galaxy is almost edge-on, hiding most of the detail from our view.

Second, and even more interesting, a jet-like protrusion extends from the core of the galaxy and down to the lower left. Jets are often associated with galaxies. While I would love this to be an extremely unusual looking and unexplainable jet, I think the actual explanation is much more mundane. I cannot confirm it, but my guess is that a galaxy much further away is almost directly behind the foreground galaxy and in a perfect position to prevent us from confirming its nature.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	2903726
PixInsight job	M7KFZQ8OLFWC9YI0CP7WO5WTFS61KHQ6
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	18h05m54s.532
RA (top/left)	18h06m47s.640
RA (top/right)	18h05m10s.392
RA (bottom/right)	18h05m01s.467
RA (bottom/left)	18h06m38s.603

Dec (center)	+18°33′41″.63
Dec (top/left)	+18°38′37″.87
Dec (top/right)	+18°42′14″.47
Dec (bottom/right)	+18°28′44″.50
Dec (bottom/left)	+18°25′07″.49

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NGC 6548 & NGC 6550

NGC 6548 & NGC 6550

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NGC 6548 & NGC 6550

NGC 6548 & NGC 6550

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