| Description | This was a challenging target which I selected to celebrate the prospect of capturing my 100th Arp observation. "Minkowski's Object", discovered in 1958, is the distorted companion dwarf galaxy at the 7 o'clock position in the halo of NGC 541, the bright, lenticular galaxy in the center. Note that the featured image is heavily cropped and enlarged nearly 4x from the original. The full capture is a substantial portion of a major galaxy cluster: Abell 194. It includes Arp 308, NW of Arp 133 (E is up), consisting of two interacting galaxies (L to R): NGC 545, a lenticular galaxy, and NGC 547, an elliptical galaxy. During capture I noticed an extended halo from NGC 545 towards Arp 133, which became more pronounced after processing. Arp's remarks suggest he was very much aware of the connection, "Central member of galaxy group associated with 3C40", where 3C40 is a radio galaxy in Abell 194. More recent research on Minkowski's Object suggests it is a young, active star forming region stimulated by a jet from a supermassive black hole in the center of NGC 541. I found the included image on the Internet while researching "3C40" which shows a composite, broad-band visual image from the Lick 120" telescope overlaid with narrow-band optical and radio data from additional telescopes (https://www.nrao.edu/archives/items/show/33560). The dark blue cloud surrounding Minkowski's Object is hydrogen gas, and the obvious jet, were both detected in radio bands by the VLA radio telescope. |
