| Description | A fascinating pairing of a large, low-surface brightness, barred spiral galaxy (IC 983) interacting with (absorbing?) a smaller elliptical galaxy (IC 982) (upper left). Essentially the spiral arms of 983 are directly connected to 982, which can best be seen in the grayscale, inverted version of my capture, found second in the gallery. Also, note the large, upper right circle is a Milky Way star, easily ingerpreted as a double star in my color images. It's significant that a galaxy as large as 983 wasn't discovered in time to be published in the NGC catalog, no doubt because the low surface brightness galaxy could only be seen in photographic plates. All NGC objects were discovered visually. The IC catalog was an extension of NGC published in 1888 and 1905. IC objects were discovered both visually and with photo-plates. Anything discovered later was almost certainly discovered using photography. |
