This
Astrobin Debut Object is a pair of magnitude 15 galaxies located in the constellation of Leo at a declination of -3 degrees. Both galaxies are on the order of 350 million light years away. This is one of the least impressive of the objects in Dr. Arp's Peculiar Galaxy catalog.
In his
Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the category of Elliptical Galaxies Close to and Perturbing Spirals. The right spiral galaxy is 2MASX J11192383-0305298, 340 million miles away. It spans just 25 arc-seconds, about 60% of the current size of Jupiter in our apparent view, and is about 40,000 light years in diameter. It looks severely disturbed, similar to a polar ring galaxy. The left elliptical galaxy is 2MASX J11192630-0305338.
The natural assumption, as Dr. Arp made, is that these 2 galaxies are interacting, especially since they are at a similar distance. But the left galaxy looks undisturbed, and the star streams of the right galaxy look as if they could be due to a merger of 2 galaxies. So, while I think that Dr. Arp’s assumption of interaction is likely, I also think that it is possible that they are not interacting and that we are looking at 3 galaxies here, not 2.
Two nearby tiny galaxies are seen nearby, one to the left and one below. I believe that these are both much further away than Arp 132.
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