Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Leo Minor (LMi)  ·  Contains:  NGC 3486  ·  PGC 1850550  ·  PGC 1853277  ·  PGC 1853804  ·  PGC 1856776  ·  PGC 1858017  ·  PGC 33184  ·  PGC 33261  ·  PGC 33267
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NGC 3486, a somewhat ignored, lovely, but not Grand Design spiral galaxy, Rick Veregin
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NGC 3486, a somewhat ignored, lovely, but not Grand Design spiral galaxy

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC 3486, a somewhat ignored, lovely, but not Grand Design spiral galaxy, Rick Veregin
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 3486, a somewhat ignored, lovely, but not Grand Design spiral galaxy

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NGC 3486 has wonderful, if faint, barred spiral arms. The faintness is surely the only reason it has not been imaged that often on Astrobin. The spiral arms are lovely, but as you move closer you can see the arms are fragmented, so this is not a Grand Design spiral. The reason for the fragmentation is presumably because it is a Seyfert 2 galaxy. Seyfert galaxies have a small, intensely bright nucleus which shows strong, broad emission lines, and for a Seyfert 2, all the emission lines are broadened. This broadening is a generated by large amounts of very hot, fast-moving gas close to the galactic center that cannot escape from the large central mass. Seyfert galaxies share many properties with quasars, and are powered in the same way: by a super-massive black hole.

I was also drawn to this area as a target because there are many deep field galaxies sprinkled around. Particularly interesting to look at are the three galaxies known as PGC 33184, or VV515 in Vorontsov-Velyaminov catalog of interacting galaxies: http://www.sai.msu.su/sn/vv/, which is the weird crescent shaped object, above and a bit left of NGC 3486.

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  • NGC 3486, a somewhat ignored, lovely, but not Grand Design spiral galaxy, Rick Veregin
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    NGC 3486, a somewhat ignored, lovely, but not Grand Design spiral galaxy, Rick Veregin
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Description: Minor cosmetic fix, an annoying bit of satellite trail that sigma rejection did not remove. I left it to the very end to fix, then forgot.

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NGC 3486, a somewhat ignored, lovely, but not Grand Design spiral galaxy, Rick Veregin