This
Astrobin Debut Object is a pair of galaxies located 330 million light years away in the constellation of Virgo at a declination of +7 degrees. In his
Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the category of Spiral Galaxies – Integral Sign.
This image contains 2 Arp objects. That fact alone is not that unusual, since there are 26 Arp groupings which have multiple Arp objects within 1 degree. But for only 4 of these cases is 1 Arp object a subset of another. That is the case here, where Arp 33 (the bottom 2 galaxies) is a subset of the Arp 326 5 galaxy chain. My image post specific to Arp 326 is
here.
The disturbed blue edge-on galaxy of Arp 33, designated UGC 8613, is a Milky Way size diameter of 120,000 light years. The yellow grand design galaxy below, designated LEDA 214126, is mostly undisturbed.
The key question is: what is causing the “integral shape” disturbance of UGC 8613? One clue could be the blue star clouds seen in both galaxy arms. These could be the remnants of one, or more, dwarf companion galaxies that are now being absorbed in a merger.
The galaxy at the right edge, UGC 8596, is not part of either Arp object but I included it because I liked its grand design spiral structure.
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