| Description | The first observation during a brief, clear window on a mostly cloudy evening during a new moon. Significantly, I was able to complete this observation at 10:22 PM on an evening when Astronomical Dusk didn't hit until 10:43. Fortunately its location in Bootes to the SSW was sufficiently far from the residual sky-glow in the NW. This is an enigmatic capture. Arp classifies it as having "small high surface brightness companions on arms", though it's far from clear to me what the companion is... in my capture (as well as Arp's), North is right. I presume the galactic center is the bright dot slightly south of center. I suppose the "companion" could be the bumps on the extreme south, though it's not clear to me that it's a separate "companion" or simply a distortion in the structure of the main galaxy. As quoted in Kanipe and Webb, Arp's notes say "appearance of wake from stellar object in E arm." Frankly I'm not sure this helps... I'm inclined to thing the "stellar object" is indeed a Milky Way star and the appearance of a wake is coincidence.... |
