This
Astrobin Debut Object is a group of 4 galaxies located 170 million light years away in the constellation of Aquarius at a declination of -4 degrees. In his
Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the category of Groups of Galaxies.
As usual, Dr. Arp's image captures more faint detail than mine. For this object, his detail is very useful for seeing the faint extended star streams.
The brightest and largest galaxy, to the upper right, is magnitude 13 galaxy MCG-1-58-9. This galaxy spans 1.2 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 60,000 light years. Just below and left is MCG-1-58-10, another magnitude 13 galaxy that is slightly smaller. Towards bottom center is the fainter magnitude 16 barred galaxy MCG-1-58-11. Finally, at the lower left edge of the image, is the faintest of the 4 galaxies, LEDA 1066529. No distance information is available for this 4th one.
All of the galaxies look disturbed to some extent, a likely sign that this is a true group and not just line-of-sight galaxies. It will be fun to see how these merge in the next billion years or so.
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