This
Astrobin Debut Object is a pair of galaxies located in the constellation of Pegasus at a declination of +17 degrees. In his
Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the category of Elliptical and Elliptical-like Galaxies Close to and Perturbing Spirals.
The bright orange elliptical is IC 5378, located 300 million light years away. This magnitude 15 galaxy spans 1 arc-minute in our apparent view, which corresponds to a diameter of 80,000 light years. I cropped the image to a tight field radius of 0.1 degrees in order to have better visibility of it in the windowed view above.
The fainter magnitude 16 barred blue spiral is LEDA 178, about the same size as IC 5378 but closer to us by about 30 million light years. Unlike IC 5378, this galaxy is very disturbed. Both spiral arms look like they have been extended around to form faint loops.. But I don’t agree with Dr. Arp’s assessment that it is being perturbed by the elliptical, since they are too far apart.
The small blue galaxy (IC 5379) at the bottom of the image is the same distance away as LEDA 178. This galaxy, although not too disturbed itself, could be the culprit that is disturbing LEDA 178.
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