Arp 91 and NGC 5951 (Gary Imm)

Arp 91 and NGC 5951

This image captures multiple objects in the constellation of Serpens at a declination of +15 degrees.

Arp 91 is the object at upper left, comprised of a pair of interacting galaxies located 100 million light years away. This object was classified by Dr. Arp into the category of Spiral Galaxies with Large, High Surface Brightness Companions on Arms. NGC 5953 is the magnitude 13 galaxy on the right. Although this looks like an elliptical galaxy in my image, the Hubble image shows it to be a face-on lenticular spiral galaxy. It is about 50,000 light years in diameter. NGC 5954 is the magnitude 14 spiral galaxy on the left, 40,000 light years in diameter.

I suspected in my image, and confirmed in the Hubble image, that NGC 5953 lies in front of NGC 5954. The star stream that extends to the right from the bottom of NGC 5954 appears to stop abruptly, but that is because the dense core of NGC 5953 is obscuring it. It is interesting to me that NGC 5953 appears relatively undisturbed, yet NGC 5954 is fairly messed up. Arp considered NGC 5953 to be the “companion”, but it looks the other way around to me.

At bottom right is the grand design spiral galaxy NGC 5951, a bit closer at 80 million light years away. This magnitude 13 galaxy spans 3.5 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 90,000 light years. We are looking at this galaxy less than 10 degrees from edge-on. A nice arm structure is present but it is difficult for us to see it. The disk is disturbed to some extent, but it is not clear why.

Finally, the small dim edge-on warped spiral galaxy below Arp 91 is UGC 9902. It is 25,000 light years in diameter. Like NGC 5951, this galaxy is also 80 million light years away, so perhaps they are interacting with each other.

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Description: Comparison to Arp and Hubble Images

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4358978
PixInsight job	AXGBNMAUIWGXM382N1FQWK6J2Q388IIM
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	15h34m10s.843
RA (top/left)	15h34m53s.480
RA (top/right)	15h33m28s.370
RA (bottom/right)	15h33m28s.258
RA (bottom/left)	15h34m53s.583

Dec (center)	+15°06′13″.17
Dec (top/left)	+15°14′08″.87
Dec (top/right)	+15°14′05″.78
Dec (bottom/right)	+14°58′16″.85
Dec (bottom/left)	+14°58′20″.10

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