ARP138

Arp 138, NGC 4015, is a pair of galaxies in Coma Berenices about 210 million light-years away. It is right on the border with Leo. In fact, the right 25% of my image is in Leo. Arp put this pair in his category Elliptical and elliptical-like galaxies: Material emanating from elliptical galaxies. His comment reads: "Absorption leads directly into E galaxy." I presume this refers to the dark cloud off the end of the spiral galaxy's tip. It's hard to tell if it is coming from the spiral or the elliptical. Arp apparently considers it coming from the elliptical or appearing to at least by the category it put it in. Since the elliptical shows no other signs of dust and spirals are often very dusty I'd suspect the spiral as being the more likely source of the dust. The redshifts of the galaxies are virtually the same so no help there.

Other than the dust cloud I see no sign the two galaxies are even interacting. If they are it must be just beginning. Apparently, they aren't quite as close as they appear to be. NED classes them as S? and E with no further refinement. It appears the spiral is closer to us than the elliptical though its redshift is very slightly larger. Are they on a collision course? No way to know as there's no way to measure their proper motion across the field. They may be moving sideways far faster than their approach velocity. It was discovered by John Dreyer on April 26, 1878. Yes, the same guy who compiled the NGC and related IC catalogs.

The field has several NGC galaxies in it. I've identified those on the annotated image as well as redshift distances in billions of light-years when known. There are distant galaxy clusters. Their position is marked by the large cD galaxy at the heart of the cluster. They are shown as having 18 or so members but I don't begin to see that many around either cD galaxy. They are marked C/GC followed by their distance in billions of light-years. NGC 4005 is also NGC 4007. Such double names are surprisingly common in the NGC.

There are two asteroids in the image. The bright one is (43477) 2001 BX7 at 18.7 magnitude. The fainter at my estimated magnitude of about 19.8 is -- I did it again -- unknown. Found and let another one get away. This was taken March 20, 2010 so a bit late to try and find it again. Minor planet center doesn't have it in their database is all I know. Edit: Since then it has been discovered in 2016. It is 2016 LN21. Since then it has faded per the MPC magnitude estimate to magnitude 20.8 a full magnitude below what I measured.

Arp's image
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp138.jpeg

Sloan image
http://astronomerica.awardspace.com/SDSS-30/NGC4015.php

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for ARP138

ARP139

Arp 139/MCG +05-31-135 consists of 2 galaxies in Coma Berenices a bit southeast of the famous Coma Cluster of galaxies. At least 2 galaxies are what the catalogs say. But there could be as many as 4 there. It's all very confusing. The main object to the west (right) is classed by NED as S pec while the eastern member is classed as E0. There is a detached object between these two. It is listed as SDSS J130727.94+264323.4 at magnitude 16.7. It isn't listed as being part of a galaxy. The western member of the duo has a long tidal arm that ends in a bright blob. That isn't listed at NED so must be considered part of Arp 139's western member. Could it be a separate galaxy drawing off the tidal plume? I can't find much at all on this object.

Arp classed it under Elliptical and Elliptical Like Galaxies: Material emanating from elliptical galaxies. So he sees the western member as an elliptical with a plume, not a spiral as classed by NED. Or maybe he sees the eastern elliptical as emitting all to the west. He left no comment to help decide this issue. See what I mean by confusing? NED shows the redshift distance for the western member as 538 million light-years and the eastern member as 519 million light-years. Are they even interacting? The minor redshift difference doesn't rule out interaction. The elliptical, however, seems distortion free so I have to wonder if it is involved at all. Maybe not.

Only one other galaxy in the field has any redshift data. It is the only other "large" galaxy in the image. It is KUG 1305+270 which is a listing from an ultraviolet catalog. So likely some major star formation has happened here in the recent past. It is a very obvious spiral but NED has it classed amazingly enough as E3 pec. Though under morphology it says S? Looks like an obvious Sc or so galaxy to me. Being 3 armed it would fit under Arp's 3 arm spiral category it would seem to me. It is shown at a redshift distance of 473 million light-years. Possibly a member of the same group as Arp 139. For that reason, I've included it in my enlarged cropped image and am including the SDSS image of it.

NED lists a redshift distance for only one other object in this field. It is the quasar SDSS J130853.87+264310.4 at 10.0 billion light-years (z=1.789540) To find it locate the pair of orange stars on the left edge of the image above center. Now come down and right to a rather bright blue star. Continue down and right to a slightly fainter somewhat less blue star with an orange star close by at the 1 O'clock position. Now go right and a bit down. The first "star" you come to is the 21st magnitude quasar. Funny things happen to our concept of distance when so much time has elapsed since the light left the object. The light traveled 10 billion years to reach us but the object isn't 10 billion light-years from us. 10 billion years ago the universe was a much smaller place. Thus the object was only about 5.8 billion light-years from us when the light started its journey. It had to travel over 40% further to make up for the expansion of the universe. All this time the object was moving away from us at an ever-increasing speed. The result is that currently the quasar (if it indeed still exists) is 15 billion light-years distant. Confusing since the universe is only 13.7 billion years old. That, though only limits how far we can see and is not a measure of the size of the universe, only the radius of the part we can see. 1.3 billion years from now we can see 15 billion light-years but by then the quasar is even further away. It becomes a race, can the light reach us before the expansion of the universe is so great we'll never see the light it emits "today". Probably the light will win this race (ignoring dark energy uncertainties) but not by much. Some sources say the critical redshift is about z=2. Larger than that light emitted today will never reach us. Dark energy may change this greatly, however. Distance is a nasty subject once you get more than a couple billion light-years away.

Arp's image
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp139.jpeg

SDSS image
http://astronomerica.awardspace.com/SDSS-11/MCG5-31-135.php

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for ARP139

ARP140

Arp 140 is a pair of interacting galaxies, NGC 274 and NGC 275 right to left. They are 65 million light years distant and in the constellation of Cetus. Arp classed them under; material emanating from elliptical galaxies. A category that makes little sense to me. M87 has a nice jet and would seem to fit but it's under galaxies with jets which is more accurate though its the black hole, not the galaxy itself that is the cause of the jet. Other than jets what can an elliptical, or its black hole, emanate? All galaxies I've imaged so far in this category involve highly distorted galaxies, #142 through #145. All appear to be due to interacting galaxies. Arp 140 appears to fall into this pattern. Or does it? In the other cases, both the elliptical and the spiral are distorted. Usually, the spiral is considerably more distorted which isn't surprising. But both show distortion. Not in this case. Here the elliptical, NGC 274, really an S0 galaxy not elliptical, seems little distorted though it is classed a being peculiar. But its companion, at the same redshift distance, NGC 275 is highly distorted and generating new stars like crazy. This seems hard to explain. It's likely they are much farther apart than their nearly equal redshift indicates with probably the distorted spiral being closer to us. I say this because its blue color overlays some of the golden S0 galaxy. The S0's higher density may be helping keep it from distorting very much. While some theories say an S0 is the result of a galaxy merger it appears NGC 274 was already S0 long before this encounter. That doesn't mean it didn't have a previous one billions of years earlier that created it. But now look really closely at the enlargement. There does appear to be a very faint linear feature coming from the S0 pointed to the east-northeast. There seems to be a faint tidal spray around the galaxy as well. So maybe Arp was right after all though I see no hint of the feature in Arp's image. I need to take a much deeper image though that is likely impossible due to satellite traffic. This pair is right in the geostationary belt as seen from my latitude.

NGC 275 does appear highly disturbed by the encounter. It is classed as SB(rs)cd pec. Peculiar it certainly is! Its spiral structure is hardly recognizable. The core is almost gone but does have a typical orange color. The galaxy is dominated by its many massive star-forming HII regions.

NGC 274, the western elliptical like galaxy was discovered by William Herschel on September 10, 1785. It is not in either of Herschel 400 observing programs. NGC 275 was discovered by his son, John Herschel on October 9, 1828.

Due to all the geostationary satellites that were seen in this image, I had to do some fancy processing, well fancy for me, to eliminate them from hiding the galaxies. Many of the trails were atop other trails making it unlikely that even if I had enough subframes I could use any normal noise rejection combine successfully. But with only 4 frames that wasn't an option to even try. Fortunately, 2 frames had no bright satellites crossing the pair. The other two had a bunch. So I processed all 4 as well as just the two "good" ones. The latter was pretty noisy having too little time to make a good image. What I did was to process it to match the light levels of the 4 frame image but then applied stronger than normal noise reduction. I then copied just the part with the galaxies and pasted it into the full image brightening it slightly. This got rid of the satellites but left less detail in the galaxies. I then merged the two using "Darken" as the blend option. This prevented the satellites from showing but returned the detail to the galaxy since the galaxies were dimmer in the 4 frame image. I didn't do this with the full image as doing so would have wiped out the three asteroids as well as the satellites and played havoc with the brightness level of the stars. I tried it but didn't like the result. So I just used this for the area in and around Arp 140.

There are three asteroids in the image. The brightest is southeast of Arp 140, a bit under one-third of the way to the lower left corner. It is (80188) 1999 VC37 at an estimated magnitude of 18.1 but appears a bit dimmer to me. Almost as bright is (49774) 1999 WT9 straight south of (49774) 1999 WT9Arp 140 about halfway to the bottom. It too has an estimated magnitude of 18.1 but is fainter than the first one in my image. Fainter still is the one near the lower left corner by a slightly orange star. It is (186173) 2001 UZ155 at an estimated magnitude of 19.1. That appears about right. The transparency this night was poor limiting my ability to go faint. Asteroids are common only 8 degrees from the ecliptic as this object is.

Arp has something entering his image as well. The angle is wrong (at a right angle) for a belt asteroid so it may be a high inclination satellite trail. Most likely of Russian origin.

Arp's image:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp140.jpeg

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for ARP140

ARP141

Arp 141 is a pair of interacting galaxies in Camelopardalis (a giraffe) that had been too far north and lost in my now defunct Polaris trees. I suspected it would make a spectacular image and it didn't disappoint. The pair are 126 million light-years distant by redshift and 130 million light-years by Tully Fisher measurement. A very close agreement. Arp put it in his class for "material emanating from elliptical galaxies". Arp had no comment on it so no way to tell if he really thought something was emanating from the elliptical or just that it appeared to be. In any case, this is an obvious case of the elliptical tearing apart a less massive and less dense spiral and suffering some collateral damage in the process. It has a large plume to the north as well as a plume to the south which is seen only because its red stars stand out against the blue stars of the spiral. Here's a case where color makes a plume obvious that wouldn't be seen visually in a black and white image like Arp's. Spectroscopic measurements, however, should detect the two very different star populations. NED classes the elliptical as a ring galaxy and the northern one as S0 pec rather than elliptical.

The pair is also known as UGC 3730. To the west is UGC 3705 classed as S?. It has almost the same redshift as Arp 141 so is obviously part of the same galaxy family. It shows some oddities so may also have interacted with other members of its group. These are the only galaxies with redshift data at NED. North of Arp 141 is the very odd galaxy KUG 0707+736. It is half red (southern half) and half very blue (northern end). A note at NED says: "A giant HII region is at the northwest end." Super hot O and B stars formed from this region are likely responsible for the blue end. But what triggered such massive stars to form. The galaxy is classed as Irregular?. Such galaxies often show massive star formation when they've interacted with another though this isn't required it is often the case. Without any redshift information, it is hard to tell if it is a member of the group or not. Most irregulars are small so not likely much further away at least. About the only other irregular galaxies of this type, I can recall seeing are on the two Hubble deep field images that look back at the fragments of galaxies in our very early universe that merged to form the spiral and elliptical galaxies we see today. Some are known to have escaped being lunch for a major galaxy. Is this one of those?

Arp's image:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp141.jpeg

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

Related Designations for ARP141

ARP142

The Space Telescope Science Institute that runs Hubble among other things, released a Hubble image of this interacting galaxy system. That gave me the push to reprocess my image. The flats were unusable so I replaced the background with a mostly false one. Until I retake it this will have to do. It is a "tad" poorer than theirs but since my system is billions of dollars cheaper I'll live with the difference. Arp 142 consists of the two galaxies NGC 2936 and NGC 2937 which are classed as ring galaxies. They are located in Hydra near the Sextans and Leo borders and are about 330 million light-years distant. NGC 2936, the porpoise shaped galaxy, is a bit over 160,000 light-years across and is full of new, blue star clouds due to its interaction with NGC 2937. Oddly NED lists several of these as separate galaxies rather than parts of the galaxy that they really are. This is obvious from the Hubble image but might not have been prior to that. I've listed those visible in my image on the annotated image as G? (Starcloud). NED classifies NGC 2936 as I? and 2937 as E while the NGC project says E+ for both. Why NGC 2936 is highly distorted by the encounter but NGC 2937 appears unchanged I don't know. Maybe its density is so high it could hold its stars while distorting the much less dense NGC 2936. That's only a guess on my part as I found nothing to explain it. The pair was discovered by Albert Marth on March 3, 1864.

The system has a third member, UGC 0513 Notes01. For some reason, the UGC catalog gives the two galaxies of Arp 142 different numbers (UGC 05130 and 05131) but gives the number UGC 05130 to a pair of galaxies, just not these two. The second galaxy with the 05130 number is the spiral hiding behind the star to the northwest. When this happens and the catalog doesn't make a distinction NED uses Notes(nn) to distinguish between them. Oddly NED has no Sloan Survey designation for this galaxy nor a classification or redshift data. The HST site indicates its distance is 230 million light-years making it 100 million light-years closer so just a line of sight coincidence.

The image contains 7 quasars including two with almost exactly the same redshift that indicate the universe was only about 2 billion years old when the light left those two objects. This doesn't mean they were 11.69 billion light-years away when the light was emitted that we are seeing. In fact, they were only about 5.2 billion light-years away when that happened. During those 11.69 billion years the universe has expanded so it took their light 11.69 billion years to get here due to the ever-increasing size of the universe. Today these galaxies are estimated to be 21.7 billion light-years distant. Yes, the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light at their great distance. And no this doesn't violate Einstein's laws. It is objects moving through space and the information carried though space that must obey the speed limit of the speed of light in a vacuum. Space itself is exempt from this "law". This results in some very odd effects, however. There's another quasar whose light took 10.04 billion years to reach us that is now 16.2 billion light-years away. But what's really mind boggling is that when the light seen today was emitted it was 5.8 billion light-years distant. Further than the 5.2 billion light-years of the first galaxy. All these calculations were made at NED using their 5 year WMAP assumptions.

Now that my mind is tied in a Gordian knot I'll end this by mentioning there's one asteroid in the image. When I looked it up back in 2009 the minor planet center estimated it to be at magnitude 18.1. When I looked it up for this update, not realizing I already had done so I found its estimated magnitude to be 17.8 at the same time and date. Now it's time for a drink.

Hubble's image:
http://hubblesite.org/image/3195/news_release/2013-23

ARP'S IMAGE
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp142.jpeg

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

Related Designations for ARP142

ARP143

Arp 143 is a pair of colliding galaxies in Lynx about 190 million light-years distant. The pair was discovered by Édouard Stephan on January 18, 1877. The red galaxy, NGC 2444, is classified as S0 pec while the blue one, NGC 2445 is an irregular of the Magellan type. It may have had some other structure prior to being torn apart by the much denser NGC 2444 which appears to be a "red and dead" galaxy though starburst activity is seen in its core thanks to the collision. NGC 2445 is packed with very blue star clusters in HII regions. Unfortunately, its redshift is too great for me to get any H alpha data on it as it has been moved out of my passband.

Arp, however, saw this pair rather differently classifying it under his category for "Material emanating from elliptical galaxies" even though neither is seen today as being an elliptical galaxy and certainly the term "material emanating" doesn't really apply. Material drug from galaxies by gravity would be more correct. Arp, however, was using visual description rather than trying to explain what was seen, I think. Arp's comment on this one puzzles me. It reads "Diffuse counter filament." I have no idea what this is referring to other than possibly the lopsided plumes from NGC 2444. The pair was discovered by Édouard Stephan on January 18, 1877.

Two other galaxies are in the image that likely are members of the same group as this pair. CGCG 206-022 is a low surface brightness classic two arm Sbc spiral to the west and ASK 045842.0 is listed as an irregular galaxy to the east. Though to my eye, it looks like a highly tilted barred spiral.

The annotated image shows several distant quasars (Q) and candidate quasars (CQ). All the candidates have spectroscopic redshift determinations so likely are either true quasars or something very akin to them to be seen as starlike objects at such great distance.

I've also annotated some of the HII regions in NGC 2445. One appears to be in two parts as the coordinates point to the space between them. Also what appears to me to be another HII region is listed as a galaxy, ASK 045722.0 by NED but with virtually the same redshift and its blue fuzzy nature looks to me to be another HII region. If not it may be the core of yet a third galaxy ripped totally apart by this collision. I rather doubt this but suppose it possible. I found nothing more on it. It looks more like an HII region in the Sloan image than in mine, I don't know why the difference other than my lower resolution may be the cause.

I found an asteroid in the image I'd overlooked the first time. It is quite bright over on the western edge of the image. How I missed it I don't know though the trail is short and moving nearly due north. This would mean I caught it right at the end or start of its retrograde motion when, except for the difference in its and our orbital plane, it would appear motionless in the sky. This lasts only a few days, a rare catch.

Arp's image is at: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/arp143.gif It is oriented south at the top while my image has north at the top. It was taken with a red sensitive emulsion (103a-D) dimming the blue regions significantly.

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

Related Designations for ARP143

ARP144

This is a redo of this pair of Arp galaxies in western Cetus about 2 degrees northeast of Arp 50. At -13 degrees declination I rarely get very good seeing for this pair. Seeing was poor in my 2008 attempt and fair for this one. Seeing it is better and my research was rather weak last time I'm redoing it. I must have entered something wrong as the galaxies aren't centered.

Arp 51 is the small spiral to the lower right of the odd pair of galaxies, Arp 144. Like Arp 50 it is in Arp's category for spirals with high surface brightness galaxies on an arm. The spiral is an IR galaxy in the 2MASS catalog also known as PGC 475 and MCG -02-01-024. Some catalogs incorrectly call it NGC 7828 which is part of Arp 144. NED has no distance data on it. The companion is ChaBG 069 (Chavira blue galaxies catalog) which NED shows as both a galaxy and as part of a galaxy. So which is it? A knot in an arm or a separate galaxy? Notes at NED on both the spiral and the object refer to it as simply an "object". Like for Arp 50, it is near a pulled out arm which is suggestive but certainly not conclusive. To me, it appears to be a background galaxy unrelated to the spiral. This is just the way it looks to me, of course. What do you see? Arp made no comment on this one.

Arp 144 is in Arp's category for material emanating from elliptical or elliptical-like galaxies. I can't understand what he means by this. Obviously, this is two interacting galaxies one an elliptical-like and one a mess. Arp 144 is about 250 million light-years distant. It is composed of at least two galaxies, NGC 7828 and NGC 7829. The latter is the elliptical-like galaxy as it is classed as S0 pec. NGC 7828 is incorrectly shown as Arp 50 in The Sky's database, maybe this accounts for my pointing error. It is classed as Im pec. So does Arp see NGC 7828 "emanating" from NGC 7829? or is it just the halo of stars around NGC 7829's core that is "emanating"? The Kanipe-Webb book is silent on this which isn't surprising. Arp left no comment to guide us either. Adding to the confusion one note says: "The spiral or a pair of galaxies are perturbed by a compact elliptical galaxy." So this source says NGC 7828 may be two galaxies. I find no other mention of this but it seems possible to me. Both galaxies were discovered by Francis Leavenworth in 1886.

Now, what about the very blue star-like object in NGC 7828? Is it a foreground star or is it a very blue knot of stars in the galaxy? The object is listed as a star in the Hubble Guide Star Catalog but the cores of NGC 7828 and 7829 are also listed as stars in the catalog. So this doesn't help any. NED doesn't show anything at this position so is of no help. The PSF in my image is galaxy like rather than a star so I will say it is part of the galaxy.

Adding to the confusion I found this: "According to a note in the IC II, NGC 7829 is a star [13 mag]." Visually 7829 does appear rather starlike and this note dates back to visual descriptions so isn't surprising.

Arp's images of these two are taken from the same 30 minute exposure on 103a-D film under seeing 3 (1" to 1.5") conditions. Much better than I had though some of the star knots in NGC 7829 seen in his image are barely visible in mine with 2.5" to 3" seeing. Good for so low in the sky.

Yes, I know it looks a bit like the Star Trek Enterprise is shooting a massive photon torpedo out its backside. A bit late as much of the starboard side of the saucer section seems to be missing.

The field is well outside the Sloan survey but a few galaxies in the image have distance data so I did prepare an annotated image for those few entries.

The entry for 6dF J0006212-131716 is labeled a galaxy but considering it is star-like and listed with a redshift of z=2.878448 which puts it over 11 billion light-years out I have to think it is really a quasar. 6dF stands for the 6 degree Field Survey. Another odd catalog is the LSCB which is the Low Central Surface Brightness catalog. LEDA = Lyon Extragalactic DAtabase for numbers above 73197. Numbers lower than this are just duplicates of the PGC catalog.

I labeled some of the brighter or more interesting looking galaxies. Only three besides Arp 144 have redshift data and one of those is mentioned above. Most are from an automatic plate measurement survey so has little information other than magnitude.

Arp's image of Arp 51:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp51.jpeg

Arp's image of Arp 144
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp144.jpeg

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

Related Designations for ARP144

ARP145

Arp 145 falls into the Arp category material emanating from elliptical or elliptical-like galaxies. In this case what is going on is more obvious. This is a case of a direct hit by an elliptical galaxy (lower left) on a near face on spiral galaxy (upper right). It punched a hole in the spiral right near the core which probably is the reddish blob at the 5:30 position using the hole as the center of the "clock". The two galaxies carry the same designation UGC 1840. The one with the hole is classed as Im pec Ring B. The other has the designation of S0 pec Ring A They are located at about 240-250 million light-years at the east end of Andromeda.

There has been no useful survey I could find of this region. Only a very few galaxies in the field have been cataloged, none with redshift data. Most aren't cataloged at all, including the interesting elongated one above and a tad left of the pair. Only those picked up on the 2MASS infrared survey are cataloged and that one apparently doesn't emit enough 2 micron light to make the catalog. This likely means it is rather dust free or composed mostly of newer stars. But has little to no current star formation.

Arp's photo of these two is at:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp145.jpeg

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for ARP145

ARP146

Astro image tip. Avoid objects in the geostationary satellite belt! No one told me this so I had a night of better than average seeing so decided to try for Arp 146 which is too far south for me to image on an average night being about 6.5 degrees south and of small angular size. That put it at the northern edge of the geostationary satellite belt as seen from my latitude. Such communications satellites aren't really stationary in the sky. They make a small, about 1 degree high figure 8 pattern around their geostationary assigned position. From my location, Arp 146 is right at the northern edge of that pattern. So I ended up imaging lots of communications satellites, one obviously long dead. I removed them from the color frames as well as all but one luminosity frame. One frame only had 3 and I decided to leave them in to give a flavor of what I had to deal with. There were 29 satellite trails in total with 5 in one blue frame. Notice the angled trails. They are decommissioned geostationary satellites. When they are about to run out of station-keeping fuel -- the orbit is unstable and the figure 8 pattern grows with time so fuel is needed to keep the bird within its prescribed spot so fixed dishes still see it -- it is moved several hundred miles higher to get it out of the way. The last of the fuel is used for this. With time the orbit is altered by the nonround earth and pull of the moon and sun until it is somewhat inclined to the equator. That is why I can tell it is a deactivated satellite. Also one is using spin stabilization. That's no longer used as far as I can determine. This causes it to blink as its reflectivity changes with its spin. It doesn't move across the entire image as I terminated the exposure before it had moved all the way across the image. You will see places where the trails fade. This is due to small clouds passing by. They didn't totally block the light but did dim it some for a few seconds. The entire image was dimmed but that isn't seen except by moving objects.

Notice the bright trail just below Arp 146. It is an active geostationary satellite though its trail wavers like the satellite are drunk. The others do as well. This is due to our atmosphere. This is the seeing I am constantly complaining about. It rapidly moves the star around in the sky. It does the same for satellite trails. This one had just the right exposure to show this motion very clearly. The worse the seeing the more "drunk" the trail. The effect of this is to blur the image and is why major observatories are located on mountain tops where they look through far less air than I have to look through. Also, they pick mountains that have what is called laminar air flow. This is a very smooth flow of air that further reduces seeing problems. No mountains and rarely any laminar air flow at my location so stars are fuzzy. I can't do much about it. The third satellite is also a decommissioned one as told by its angled trail.

Now for Arp 146. It is classed by Arp under "Galaxies (not classifiable as S(pherical) or E(liptical)): With associated rings. There are three in this class. The other two are Arp 147 and 148. 147 was the 10 galaxy Hubble made famous and 148 is Mayall's Object, the bullet through a galaxy that is also a famous Hubble image. Hubble hasn't as yet released a pretty image of this one. Nor could I find a frame of it at the HST Legacy site as of January 2017. So I finally beat Hubble to one.

Arp 146 is composed of two galaxies PGC 509 S pec (Ring B) and PGC 510 S0 pec (Ring A). PGC 509 is the ring while 510 the bullet that made the ring. Why the bullet is usually referred to as Ring A I've not figured out. It is rarely a ring though this one seems to have just one arm that looks much like a ring. The galaxies are just under a billion light years away thus rather small in angular size. While 510 is classed as S0 it does seem to have a single spiral arm. S0 galaxies aren't supposed to have defined arms but be just a spindle of stars. That isn't the case here.

I could find no redshift data for any other galaxy in the image. Not even a MASX IR galaxy is in the image. Only those whose positions were automatically measured by APMUKS. It gathers little data other than position and crude photometric data. So this is a part of the sky not well studied.

The asteroid to the lower right of Arp 146 is (38878) 2000 SL121 at magnitude 17.8

Arp 146 is located in Cetus the whale right up against the border with Pisces and Aquarius. Right in the geostationary belt for my latitude. Grrr.

Arp's photo of this is at:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp146.jpeg

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for ARP146

ARP147

Seems the same time Hubble was taking this object, Arp 147, a pair of ring galaxies, so was I. The pair is also known as IC 298 so even the IC catalog has this as one object. It was discovered by Stephane Javelle on December 29, 1893.

With no backlog to process and no wood to cut -- we pulled down yet another "widow maker" from our vast mess created from this summer's tornado which missed us "by that much", and cut it up into fireplace lengths -- Hubble was able to process their version and rush it to the news media. So while imaging another Arp galaxy I did a quick process of my version of the same object. Though in my case it is more "a perfect .10" Obviously theirs is better but the real reason for downgrading mine by a factor of 100 is that the star beside the two galaxies is far more prominent in my image than theirs and is in the right spot for a decimal point. Also, I'd like to point out my telescope cost several billion dollars less than theirs and needs no shuttle to service it. So there!

The Hubble version, in case you have been down a rabbit hole, is at:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/37/
Note that their image is not really true color as it used blue for the blue channel, white light for the green channel and infrared for the red channel. This makes for stronger reds and blues than if seen by the human eye. I used true color filters so this should be pretty much the correct colors if your eye could see color in such a faint object. Note that getting closer doesn't help. It just gets bigger at the same rate we see more total light. Spreading that extra light over the extra area just makes it the same brightness. So no matter how close you get to it the human eye wouldn't see color, it would always be too faint. Surprising but true. So I guess it really doesn't matter how the colors are mapped. Black and white is the only "true color" for this object and most others I feature.

It appears the galaxy on the left has passed right through the one on the right. That is, the one passed through the other turning it into a zero. In the process, the one was distorted so as to have two rings rather than spiral arms that it likely had before so it too is considered a ring galaxy. In my shot, it too looks a bit like the "Saturn Galaxy" in a recent update. The reddish part of the ring toward the bottom left was likely the core of the now zero galaxy prior to the collision. Its strong blue color is due to rapid star formation triggered by the collision. It looks like the "one" galaxy was stripped of its dust and gas by the collision so has no raw materials for star formation. Considering its slightly overall red color it likely had used up most of its dust and gas long ago and hasn't had much active star formation for a billion years or so. The pair is thought to be about 400 million light-years from us. The small blue galaxy down and left of my "perfect .10" is UGCA 057. I can find nothing on it, however.

About that big galaxy in the upper right corner... Unfortunately, it is one of those with no info available other than its catalog name of APMUKS(BJ) B030818.97+011155.2. You'd think more would be known about such a big guy but apparently not.

The nice thing about this is that Hubble didn't image these guys, only Arp 147 so maybe I scooped Hubble after all.

My shot was taken at 0.5" per pixel rather than my normal 1" per pixel as this is one small object. Seeing that night wasn't all that good but better than I normally get so doubt I'll go back and try again. Besides, Hubble has me beat on this one anyway. Can't fight its multi-billion dollar bankroll!

I cropped the image to show just the center one-quarter of the total image area as there wasn't much of interest in the rest of the image. Also, this crop makes it the same physical size as my 1" per pixel images. Thus keeping bandwidth for emails at a manageable level.

Arp's version is at:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp147.jpeg

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x20'x1 RGB=3x10'x2, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for ARP147