This
Astrobin Debut Object is a pair of interacting galaxies located 370 million light years away in the constellation of Coma Berenices at a declination of +17 degrees. In his
Arp catalog, Dr. Arp classified this object into the category of Galaxies with Jets, although I don't see any jets here.
This magnitude 15 object spans 1.3 arc-minutes in our apparent view, which corresponds to a width of 140,000 light years. The galaxy on the left is IC 803, with an orange core and blue star clusters at the left and right edges. The galaxy on the right is LEDA 215034, with a bright white core.
This structure is fascinating. Both galaxies appear edge-on to us and form a perfect arc. A star stream bridge connects the 2 disks. This object reminds me a bit of
Arp 193, although the galaxy cores of this object have more separation.
The orange edge-on galaxy immediately to the right and below Arp 149 is galaxy 2MASX J12393224+1634410. It is much further away, at almost 1 billion light years.
I find it very odd that so many edge-on galaxies, at least 7, are seen in this image.
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