Arp 70 / PGC 5085 and 212740

Designation(s)Arp 70, PGC 5085, PGC 212740
Object Type(s)Galaxy, Galaxy Cluster
Relevant Catalog(s)All (Chron), Arp
Arp CategorySpiral galaxies with small high surface brightness companions on arms
Obs. Lat/Long42° 17', 073° 57'
ConstellationPisces
Date and Time Observed2025-08-28 01:05:00
InstrumentEdgeHD 8" w/f7 reducer-1,422mm FL
CameraPlayer One Apollo-M Mini
Image DetailsUp is 182.6 degrees E of N. Transparency: Excellent. Seeing: Good. Total integration time was 60m 15s. Exposures 15s@300g, No Filter. Dithered and recentered in SharpCap. No guiding.
DescriptionThe Arp image shows faint dust lanes "nearly" connecting the larger galaxy (PGC 5085 or Arp 70b) and the smaller one (Arp 70a or PGC 212740). Frankly I struggled to reproduce the dust lanes, in part because my camera was rendering not a wisp of dust, but an extended arm connecting the two galaxies. It's clearer in the positive image. This is another case where a modern CMOS camera on an 8" telescope delivers "deeper" imagery than the best telescope in the world from 1966.

A 2020 study conclude: "Arp 70b is an interacting galaxy where we have found two large-scale outflows currently taking place, one of them in the centre of the galaxy and the other associated with a giant H ii region in the arm, close to the centre itself". Surprising to me, the matter is flowing from the larger galaxy to the smaller. [Citation: A Camps-Fariña, J E Beckman, J Font, I del Moral-Castro, S F Sanchez, A Borlaff, Arp 70: an interacting galaxy with extreme outflows, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 493, Issue 1, March 2020, Pages 1434–1446, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa347]
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