This
Astrobin Debut Object is a spiral galaxy located 0.5 billion light years away in the constellation of Cetus at a declination of -4 degrees. In his
Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the category of Spiral Galaxies with Small, High Surface Brightness Companions on Arms.
The main yellow spiral, NGC 702, is a fascinating object. This magnitude 13 galaxy spans 1 arc-minute in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 130,000 light years. SIMBAD shows the bright blue region at the top end of the NGC 702 to be a separate galaxy, designated 2MASX J01511833-0402567. So it looks like these two galaxies are entangled in the early stages of a merger process.
Looking closely, a star stream extends from the top right of NGC 702, streaming clockwise around the galaxy. The plume ends at the small spiral on the left, or at least it seems that way to me. But the small spiral is not disturbed at all. I think that small galaxy is not interacting, and that the plume is just a line of sight illusion. But it is impossible to know for sure from this image. No distance data is available for the small galaxy, whicih is designated LEDA 144370.
I extended the frame to include the interesting edge-on spiral galaxy LEDA 6791.
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