This
Astrobin Debut Object is a pair of merging galaxies located 0.5 billion light years away in the constellation of Delphinus at a declination of +17 degrees.
Both galaxies are severely disturbed and are in the
late stage of a merger. The object spans 30 arc-seconds in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 75,000 light years.
I was confused at first about the location of the core remnants until I found a 2010 paper which analyzed this object using a combination of Spitzer, Hubble, Chandra, and AKARI (infrared) data. I have labelled the 2 cores in the mouseover.
The most interesting aspect of this object to me is the bright red region I captured, which appears offset from the cores. The paper concludes that this is a massive young starburst region, and in fact it is the most extreme starburst found outside of a galaxy nucleus anywhere in the universe as of 2010. This region is responsible for almost all of the infrared luminosity in this object.
Comments