This
Astrobin Debut Object, also known as NGC 497, is a disturbed spiral galaxy located 330 million light years away in the constellation of Cetus at a declination of +1 degrees. This magnitude 13 galaxy spans 2 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a large diameter of 175,000 light years.
In his
Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the category of Spiral Galaxies with Split Arm.
This galaxy had an odd, fascinating arm structure. The central region resembles a fairly typical grand design spiral galaxy. But at the lower left and upper right ends of the disk, suddenly all order is lost. Arm fragments start from nowhere and travel at odd angles to the rest of the disk. This galaxy has obviously been disturbed by something.
It is possible that the disturbance culprits are visible in the frame. Both the small blue smudge to the left of Arp 8 and the brighter galaxy above Arp 8 are about the same distance away. So one, or both, of these small galaxies may be the disturbance source.
The distant galaxy cluster seen in the top left of the image is 2.1 billion light years away.
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