VV 426 is a pair of galaxies in Hercules. The western galaxy is UGC 10976, a SB spiral with a drawn out arm. Redshift puts it at 220 million light-years. Tully-Fisher measurements put it between 230 and 310 million light-years. Is it interacting with the other galaxy in VV 426, UGC 10977? NED gives a redshift distance for the pair as 210 million light-years. But it puts the redshift distance of UGC 10977 at 200 million light-years. NED classifies UGC 10977 as Sc. The VV catalog says it is itself a pair of interacting galaxies. I assume the second galaxy is the object on the east (left) end of the galaxy. It isn't in either NED nor SIMBAD. Thus I have no idea how, without something more they can consider these two interacting. If so it is a three galaxy interacting system. It appears to my untrained eye that the two main galaxies are likely interacting or have interacted in the recent past. If they are really about 20 million light-years apart that interacting had to have happened long ago. Thus I think they are closer to each other than redshift would indicate. But they are likely further apart than their projected separation, which if you use 210 million light-years for their distance is only 49,000 light-years.

I measure UGC 10976 at 52,000 light-years including the drawn out arm. UGC 10977 is slightly longer at 61,000 light-years. Though seen nearly edge on it appears the smaller of the two. Thus their projected separation is less than the diameter of either. I doubt the projected separation is close to their real separation however.

This field is poorly studied with no other galaxies in the image showing a redshift at NED. Nor were any asteroids found in the image. For these reasons I didn't prepare an annotated image.

This was my first July image except for Barnard's star I posted back in July right after it was taken.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME