NGC 3347, NGC 3354 and NGC 3358 (Gary Imm)

NGC 3347, NGC 3354 and NGC 3358

This trio of spiral galaxies is located roughly 140 million light years away in the constellation of Antlia at a declination of -36 degrees. The low altitude of these targets from my location made it tough to capture the details.

Although the data suggests that they are in the same vicinity, I don’t see much disturbance in these galaxies so they are likely too far apart from each other to be strongly interacting.

NGC 3347 (at upper right) has the most interesting structure. It is a magnitude 11.4 galaxy which spans 4 arc-minutes in our apparent view. This corresponds to a large diameter of 150,000 light years. We are viewing this galaxy at 10 degrees from edge-on. The 2 graceful outer spiral arms are mirrored by a similar structure of the brighter inner region. The core has an odd, asymmetric structure. I think that a small Milky Way star is superimposed on the core region, just above and left of the small core.

Just left of NGC 3347 is the small barred galaxy NGC 3354. This is a strange one. Supposedly it is the same distance away as the other galaxies, which means that it has a diameter of 20,000 light years. But that is a dwarf, or at best irregular, galaxy size. It is too small for a galaxy to have such a structured barred spiral shape. So I think that this galaxy is much further away. This would also explain its lack of disturbance.

NGC 3358 is the large spiral at lower left, with a Milky Way size diameter of 125,000 light years. This slightly barred galaxy has a diffuse outer disk and a bright inner region. The major axis of the bright region is not quite aligned with those of the bar and outer disk.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	5542145
PixInsight job	GOECM5980JC98RP3H33LQG4LN2UM2VCO
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	10h43m09s.498
RA (top/left)	10h44m01s.299
RA (top/right)	10h42m13s.766
RA (bottom/right)	10h42m17s.478
RA (bottom/left)	10h44m05s.360

Dec (center)	-36°22′32″.59
Dec (top/left)	-36°14′56″.42
Dec (top/right)	-36°16′09″.27
Dec (bottom/right)	-36°30′07″.52
Dec (bottom/left)	-36°28′54″.25

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