Description | This is a beautiful, bright spiral galaxy, slightly elongated. Normal to the casual astronomer. Unless you read Arp's remarks: "Faint straight absorption lanes lead toward nucleus, become triple". What is an absorption lane? I believe it's a cool (darker) dust lane that obscures some of the light emanating from the galaxy, absorbing specific wavelengths and creating "absorption lines" on the galaxy's spectrum. Can I see it on the image? Yup. If you look for it, it shows up clearly in Arp's capture as a light feature. In my color image it shows up as a slightly darker-brown feature from the edge of the disk in the NW (upper left) towards the center.As it approaches the nucleus, it forks into at least two prongs (and 3 in Arp's higher resolution image). If the galaxy were an eyeball, this dust lane would make it appear slightly "bloodshot". The second image in the gallery shows two color views of the galaxy, where the color balance is shifted slightly to improve the absorption lane's visibility, and where a second image shows arrows to locate the feature explicitly. I did not take notice of this until I went looking for it, triggered by Arp's remarks. Who knew it made the galaxy peculiar? |