Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Sextans (Sex)
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Arp 338, Gary Imm
Arp 338, Gary Imm

Arp 338

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Arp 338, Gary Imm
Arp 338, Gary Imm

Arp 338

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Description

This Astrobin Debut Object is a pair of galaxies located in the constellation of Sextans at a declination of -8 degrees. This object is the last entry in the Arp catalog. It is one of the smallest and faintest Arp entries and was classified by Dr. Arp into the category of Miscellaneous.

Within Arp 338, the right galaxy is the magnitude 15.8 elliptical galaxy PGC 154807. This galaxy is 680 million light years away and has a diameter of 130,000 light years. The bar at left is a magnitude 18.5 edge-on spiral galaxy PGC 3094767. No distance information is available for it. If both of these galaxies are at the same distance, the edge-on galaxy is 90,000 light years in diameter.

Since the edge-on galaxy is undisturbed, I don’t believe that the galaxies of Arp 338 are close enough to be interacting. I think they are simply a line-of-sight coincidence. The blue galaxy just below and left of Arp 338 is magnitude 17.3 galaxy PGC 1010862.

The pair of elliptical galaxies at the center of the image is more interesting than the Arp object, with its star cloud deformation.

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