Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Lynx (Lyn)
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Arp 195, Gary Imm
Arp 195, Gary Imm

Arp 195

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Arp 195, Gary Imm
Arp 195, Gary Imm

Arp 195

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Description

This object, also known as UGC 4653, is a tiny galaxy triplet located 0.75 billion light years away in the constellation of Lynx at a declination of +35 degrees. The tight asymmetric crop of this image is due to some nearby bright stars. The shape of this object reminds me of a grasshopper, but there is already another Arp object with that same nickname. But I think that this object is more worthy of that nickname.

The galaxies of this object spans 3 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a span of over 200,000 light years. Arp classified this object into the interesting category of "Galaxies with material ejected from nuclei". The smaller background galaxies range from 1 to 2 billion light years away.

This is an amazing object for 2 reasons. The first is that 3 galaxies can be aligned, all face-on, so closely together without much distortion. The second is the beautiful horizontal star stream which extends for almost 200,000 light years. I like that the blue color of this long star stream contrasts with the orange of the source galaxy.

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