Arp’s Peculiar Galaxies
Page 7 of 10
Arp observations 61-70 of 94 total to date.
| Thumbnail | Title/link | Arp Category | Date Observed | Observer Description |
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Arp 189 / Umbrella Galaxy / NGC 4651 | Galaxies with narrow filaments | 2024-05-01 22:38:00 | This is a very bright and reasonably large galaxy, where the "handle", a faint, vertical dust lane, became evident after about 30m of integration. Clouds shut down observing after 55m. Affinity Photo processing of the .png image saved "as adjusted" in Sharpcap makes it more apparent at the cost of a much noisier background. In most other respects this spiral galaxy appears normal. It is slightly elongated vertically, and the outer arm of the spiral is slightly detached from the rest of the disc, both consistent with a gravitational attraction from the top of the image. |
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Arp 205 / NGC 3448 | Galaxies with material ejected from nuclei | 2024-04-22 23:10:00 | NGC 3448 was discovered by William Herschel in 1789. Impressive when you appreciate he was observing by eye. He did not discover UGC 6016 which is the smudge you can see in the upper part of the image, just right of center, a 17th magnitude dwarf galaxy. NGC 3448 seems to have two nuclei, which is presumably why Arp describes it as depicting "material ejected". That may be, though it seems more likely that this is the result of an incomplete galaxy merger. I find it impressive that despite the full moon, with some processing, I was able to capture not only NGC 6016 but also hints of the dust lanes connecting it to NGC 3448. |
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Arp 206 / NGC 3432 | Galaxies with material ejected from nuclei | 2024-04-21 23:15:00 | Arp 206 consists of an edge-on spiral galaxy (NGC 3432) of magnitude 11.3 interacting with a magnitude 16.3 galaxy, UGC 5983 (the little smudge to the right and slightly higher). There does seem to be a suggestion of a second interacting galaxy in the opposite direction, in the same plane as NGC 3432. Both may be represent what Arp categorizes as "material ejected from nuclei", though it seems equally likely that the materials may be in a merger process. |
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Arp 210 / NGC 1569 | Galaxies with irregularities | 2024-02-29 00:00:37 | The target emerged relatively quickly. Consider compass bearings through the galaxy, with north pointing up and to the left through the long axis of the galaxy. The central bulge is elongated along the N-S axis, and appears slightly bent on the z axis, with ends below the central plane of the disk. The southern hemisphere disk appears thick and intact. The northern hemisphere appears to have been disrupted. The disk is largely missing from W to NW, as is a smaller section from NNE to NE. Irregular indeed. |
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Arp 212 / NGC 7625 | Galaxies with irregularities | 2024-10-26 20:03:00 | This is a mysterious looking galaxy. If you don't look carefully, it appears like a lenticular galax. But the galatic center bumps out more like a spiral, and then there's a second, tiny bright spot just off center, which would seem to be the galactic center from a dwarf galaxy. Are we looking at two generations of merger? That is, a lenticular galaxy absorbing a smaller spiral and then a dwarf? Also, what are the dark lanes at the top and bottom of then the galactic center I've been attributing to the first merger. Anyway, even though it's quite small, it's engaging and beautiful. This was my third outing with my new, Player-one Apollo-Mini monochrome camera and I started feeling comfortable with it. |
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Arp 213 / IC 356 | Galaxies with irregularities | 2024-02-29 00:00:41 | This is a beautiful, bright galaxy, slightly elongated on the N/S axis, which appears to have a section of the outer disk, perhaps 10% of the total area, shaved from west to south. |
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Arp 214 / NGC 3718 | Galaxies with irregularities | 2024-04-16 21:30:00 | This is a striking target worth revisiting. Was enjoying watching the image build until a wall of clouds stopped the observation. With some stretching in Affinity Photo was able to capture the striking, twisted arms which were evident on the screen but less evident in the original SharpCap capture. |
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Arp 225 / NGC 2655 | Galaxies with amorphous spiral arms | 2024-02-29 00:00:45 | Amorphous spiral arms indeed! During capture they were just perceptible on my SharpCap live stack, which means that post-processing was required to make them visible in the final web images. The core and central disk are quite evident, but the arms are diaphanous. If they contained more stars this would look like the Pinwheel Galaxy! |
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Arp 229 / NGC 507-508 | Galaxies with concentric rings | 2024-12-26 19:39:00 | NGC 507 is a large and relatively bright galaxy where the galactic disc forms discrete rings of diminishing brightness as you move away from the core. This is categorized as a lenticular galaxy: more structure than a typical elliptical galaxy, but lacking the arm structure for a spiral. If you examine all of the galaxies so categorized in the Atlas (227-231), the first three (227-229) all depict a pair of galaxies, with a large, central lenticular galaxy. Confusingly, the other two (230-31) depict polar ring structures within a single, lenticular framework. |
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Arp 233 | Galaxies with the appearance of fission | 2024-02-21 00:00:35 | This is a tiny object which stresses the limits of my 8" SCT with 294 sensor. The featured image reproduced here is only 158 pixels in the original capture where it appears as an elongated blob. Given that Arp described this as a galaxy "with the appearance of fission", I processed the SharpCap .png in Affinity Photo to emphasize the asymmetry within the capture. After processing, a slight elongation at approximately 190 degrees relative-rotation is more evident. Nevertheless, of the 23 Arp Galaxies so categorized (Arp 233-256), this is the most "normal" looking and least obvious fissioning galaxy in the series, even with the benefit of the 200" Hale Telescope's resolution. |