ARP094

Arp 94 is listed under Arp's category for spiral galaxies with elliptical galaxies on a arm. It is located less than a degree east of Gamma Leonis so is very easy to find and is about 68 million light-years away. It consists of two "big and bright" interacting galaxies; NGC 3226 to the north and 3227 to the south. The pair is quite easily seen in my 10" scope and likely a 6" should so them as well. Besides being in Arp's list they are also in the Herschel 400 list, another list I'm slowly trying to image so this one kills two birds with one image.

William Herschel found them on February 14, 1784. My log from April 15, 1985 on a night reduced to fair by humidity using my 10" f/5 scope at up to 150x reads for NGC 3226: "Small, round galaxy with little detail and poorly defined nucleus, nearly overlapped by NGC 3227." My entry for NGC 3227 reads: "Larger oval (than 3226), nearly featureless galaxy with somewhat central region. Seems to extend into 3226 as already mentioned." Apparently, I didn't realize I was looking at plumes caused by their interaction. Arp's comment reads:" Comp. on edge of large, very faint loop extending opposite galaxy. Light line E-W is plate defect."

There are several other galaxies in the image at about the same distance as Arp 94. All are far smaller, however. NGC 3226 is classed as E2 pec by NED and simply E by the NGC project. It has an AGN at its heart and is classed as both a LINER and Seyfert 3 galaxy. NGC 3227 is classed SAB(s) pec by NED and simply Sb by the NGC project. It is a Seyfert 1.5 galaxy so also has an AGN at its core. So one sees it as a barred spiral and the other as having no bar. I see it as a mess. The motor oil colored dust patch on its west side would seem to indicate a lot of its dust and gas is being ripped from it by the interaction. If they merge a large elliptical galaxy will likely result.

This is a reshoot. I'd hoped to pick up more of its plumes but didn't go much deeper this time than before. This one needs a far better night than I had the two nights I shot it this time. I wasn't happy with the first round and wanted a lot more time on it. But the skies were rather uncooperative. I only got twice the data under poor skies. Still, I think it came out better than the first time with half the data but not by a lot. The difference may be more in improved processing skills as the stacked FITS look very similar. Unfortunately, they were framed rather differently and I'd lose too much of the field if I combined the data so just used the new data.

Edit: With my skills of today I could redo this using the best of both images. Not having time for that right now I'm just including both versions. The later version has more detail in the core of the galaxies but loses the plume detail.

In the annotated image there is one other NGC galaxy, NGC 3222. It too has very different classifications. NED says SB0 while the NGC project says E-S0. It is located 4 times further away than Arp 94. It was discovered by August Winnecke in March of 1855. Below it is a group of galaxies at 540-550 million light-years. It contains two other interacting galaxies that Arp missed at the lower right: NPM1G +20.0234 is on the right and seems rather normal while SDSS J102247.38+194730.2 on the left has a huge plume. Quite a few galaxies are in the area that have no redshift data. I presume at least some of these are also members of this group. While the group seems obvious NED shows no group at this location. There are 5 groups in the image that NED does mention, however. All much further away.

GMBCG J155.93619+19.80272 has 11 members and is 4.4 billion light-years away.
GMBCG J155.72679+19.85862 has 10 members at a distance of 4.2 billion light-years.
GMBCG J156.04999+19.79241 has 9 members at 3.2 billion light-years.
GMBCG J155.61002+19.91511 has 9 members at 4.5 billion light-years.
All of the above have an anchoring galaxy at the same location and distance as the cluster.
WHL J102402.5+194501 with 7 members at 5.2 billion light-years has a position one second of arc below that of what may be its BCG. No redshift is provided for that galaxy however.

There are two asteroids in the image but 4 asteroid trails. This is because the image was taken over two nights, March 27 and March 28, 2011. The asteroids were slow moving and far enough from the edge to be in frame both nights. They are:
(32073) 2000 JT61 at magnitude 18.4 and (157849) 1998 SH96 at magnitude 19.4 as estimated by the minor planet center. On the second night (157849) 1998 SH96 moved into the glow of NGC 3222 but can still be seen. Brighter (32073) 2000 JT61 was on the east side of Arp 94 the first night and moving out of its glow on the west side the second night. Thanks to the background glow of the galaxies the color frames show up somewhat. Usually, those are against such a dark sky there is nothing there in the luminance image and they are not seen.

You will see a quasar marked with a question mark southeast of Arp 94. NED says it is a star or a galaxy but shows it as a point source with a redshift of 11.6 billion light-years light travel time. There's no way I'd pick up a star or galaxy at that distance. So I went against authority and marked it as a quasar but added the question mark to indicate there's a question about this one.

There are some other objects marked with a question mark as well but no identification. I'm certain all are galaxies as I looked at each one on the Sloan Survey images to verify they were real. I did this because NED doesn't list them. Likely many others deserve a question mark, these are just the ones I looked at to find redshift data and found not only no redshift data but no galaxy either! About 21% of those I checked were missing yet NED shows over 3000 objects in this image. I don't know why these were omitted. I'm used to finding one and one time 2 missing from NED this way but 4 is a record. There are likely more as my sample size was only 19. The one due west of NGC 3226 is one of a pair of galaxies. The fainter one is listed but with no redshift. The brighter is totally missing. Below it and a bit east is another pair, a bit further apart. Again the faint one made NED the brighter did not. There was another pair in which the fainter member wasn't listed but even after consulting the Sloan image I was uncertain if it was a star or galaxy. It is among a group of 6 galaxies (5 if it is a star) all overlapping making identification difficult. Look for the galaxy at 2.4 billion light-years southeast of NGC 3222. It is orange with a small object beside it on the east. In the Sloan image, it is several galaxies plus this object. A couple of the galaxies are seen in my image but most just add to the fuzz around it.


Arp's image: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp94.jpeg

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=9x10' RGB=4x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for ARP094

ARP095

Arp 95 is a triple galaxy system located in Bootes about 425 million light-years from us. Arp put these under Galaxies with companions on arms: Elliptical galaxy companions. By this. the lower one to the right isn't included. Still many consider it part of Arp 95. It is IC 4461. The larger or the two Arp refers to is IC 4462. Both were discovered by Stephane Javelle on June 22, 1895. IC 4461 is not classed at NED. Seligman says it is SBc?. Its redshift puts it twice as distant as the two true members of Arp 94. The elliptical has the same redshift as the big spiral so certainly is a member of the group 860 million light-years while the other two are at 420 million light-years.

The two true members of Arp 95 are IC 4462 a SBb starburst galaxy and PGC 52123 an elliptical galaxy. My image may show a faint hint of a connection between the two. The only other hint of distortion is that there appears to be a weak tidal plume off the northwestern arm of the spiral, opposite the elliptical. Was it caused by the companions? I found nothing to help answer this. Arp's comment reads: "Star-like condensation in spiral. Connection to E galaxy inferred, not seen." The "star-like condensation" turns out to be just that, a foreground star. At least the SDSS lists it as a star and it appears to be a star in the Sloan image. While enlarged by seeing in my image it shows the typical PSF (point spread function) of a star rather than a star cloud or galaxy so I agree with the Sloan image. It is quite obvious in my image to the upper right of the galaxy's core.

Some sources consider the elliptical IC 4462 and the big spiral IC 4461. Looking at Javelle's positions (not quite correct but likely consistent as to their error since they were made at the same time) I go with IC 4462 being the spiral Arp refers to and 4461 being the spiral to the southwest. Here's a link showing Javelle's positions precessed to 2000 coordinates http://cseligman.com/text/atlas/j1326.1327.jpg . Webb and Kanipe identify the galaxies with the two northern galaxies being the IC entries. Dennis Webb has told me such mix-ups were common. Determining who was right was often impossible but trying to be as accurate as possible delayed the book by a year or more.

There is little on the rest of the field. The galaxy to the left in the enlarged, cropped image is MAPS-NGP O_326_3139474. This plate measurement catalog is the only entry in NED for this rather major galaxy compared to most of the field. NED shows no entry for it in the SDSS or any other catalog. Though the SDSS does list the star to its northwest. Having nothing more than what the automated plate measurement comes up with there is no distance estimate for it or any other galaxy in the field. This is really a dead zone as far as information goes.

When taking this, one red frame was lost to clouds so I retook it after the clouds cleared and the other color frames were shot. Or I tried to. Somehow I told the software to take a blue frame rather than red and didn't catch it until now. So this one has one red, two green and 3 blue frames thanks to my error. This did make getting decent red in the image difficult and likely explains why the elliptical is more white than yellow-orange of a typical elliptical. Though on the SDSS image it is a much paler color than usual for ellipticals using their 7 color scheme that includes three near-infrared channels that turns most ellipticals far redder than they really are. So my color may not be as red deficient as it appears. Another for the retake list, however.

Arp's image is at:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp95.jpeg

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' (one dimmed by clouds) R=1x10'x3 G=2x10'x3 B=3x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for ARP095

ARP096

Arp 96 falls under Arp's category for spiral galaxies with elliptical galaxies on their arms. They are located 205 million light-years away based on their redshifts which are virtually identical. But we can't say the elliptical is on the arm of the spiral. It would be better to say it appears to be on the arm. If it really were I suspect the arm (more a plume) would be more highly distorted. Arp stated his categories as if they were fact when they were more how they appeared to him. In some cases the galaxy on a spiral's arm is now known to be a far distant galaxy. His other categories were often incorrect. Especially those that he said categorized as material ejected from the nucleus. That's not true for any in that category that I've been able to determine. In this case, their redshifts are virtually identical indicating they are closely related but that doesn't mean one is on the arm of the other. Still, interaction likely is why the spiral's arms are so distended. Also, note the faint arc of stars at the southern end of the lower galaxies halo about halfway to the red star below it. Why is this short arc so well defined? I found nothing on it.

Arp's comment on this pair reads: "Faint diffuse counter arm, and arm leading to companion." These don't follow the curve of the two arms of the spiral galaxy and lie beyond them. They appear even more diffuse than the spiral which is surprisingly diffuse for a spiral to begin with. I would call them plumes rather than arms. It appears to be an old spiral in which star formation ceased several billion years ago turning it somewhat red in color as the bluer stars have all burned out and turned to faint white dwarfs, pulsars etc. that give off little light. Since it is usually the hot blue stars that give a spiral it's highly detailed features it isn't surprising that without them it looks awfully fuzzy. This could be the result of an interaction far older than its encounter with the current elliptical companion but I doubt it.

This pair is known as UGC 03536B/MCG +14-04-10 (spiral) and UGC 3536A/MCG +14-04-11 (elliptical). NED says the spiral is Sc while the Elliptical is just listed as E or E? A note at NED says of it: "Compact symmetrical object with red envelope." The pair is located in Cepheus only 3.4 degrees from the pole. Certainly, it would qualify as the Arp North Pole Galaxy. Imaging this close to the pole is testament to how precisely I've achieved polar alignment. It takes extreme accuracy to go for two hours without image rotation at this declination as any who have tried it can attest. Until the storm forced me to take out my two Polaris trees I'd not been able to do any imaging in this part of the sky. The Arp 25-114 pair is less than a degree further from the pole. This close to the pole I can ignore my rule of sticking within 2 hours of the meridian as it makes very little difference.

Actually, this is a triple galaxy in the WBL (White+Bliton+Bhavsar groups) and KTG (Karachentsev Isolated Triplets of Galaxies Catalogue) catalogs. The third galaxy is CGCG 362-033/MCG +14-04-014/PGC 020191 among other designations. It is the obvious spiral to the northeast. It is listed as Sa in NED. It appears to have a ring structure in my image not mentioned in the classification. This may be due to my resolution and when seen at higher resolution is not a ring at all. I was unable to find any images of it on the net with even as much resolution as I have.

No other galaxy in the image has a redshift at NED so I didn't prepare an annotated image.

This image was taken at 0.5" per pixel. The image has been cropped however as even cropped it is 3006x2004 pixels in size. These galaxies are quite small in angular size and I took advantage of one of the very rare nights when this was possible.

Arp's image of the pair is at: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp96.jpeg
For his image, he used 103a-D film. I used a lot of it in my film days before 2415 film was available. I still had part of a 100' roll in my freezer when I gave up film work. I threw it out as it was about 20 years old as I'd changed to hypered 2415 years before. It is rather well matched to the human eye for its response covering 4700 to 6000 angstroms. So lops off the blue and red ends of the spectrum passing mostly the region our eye is most sensitive to. Arp used no filter. Since these galaxies are somewhat red I'd have expected him to have used 103a-E which is more red sensitive.

Arp's image: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp96.jpeg

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x10'x1 RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for ARP096

ARP097

Arp 97 is classed by Arp as "Spiral galaxies with companion on arms: elliptical galaxy companions". This double galaxy has only a single designation UGC7085A. Oddly UGC 7085 is 22 degrees south of this pair and in no way related. There must be an interesting story here but I don't know it. The pair is about 330 million light years away so getting much detail is rather difficult. The southern galaxy has two bright arms obviously tidally extended and straightened. The north arm extends over the northern galaxy. Its yellow color contrasting to the blue of the overlaying arm. Note though that the lower galaxy seems to have a third arm running nearly due east. Well a tidal feature heads east, sort of toward the very blue galaxy MCG+05-29-012. Its distance is 353 million light years. Close enough that it too may be involved though I found no papers indicating this and it doesn't show any sign of distortion. It may be this "arm" is just an entirely separate object, probably much closer than the two making up Arp 97 but so faint it isn't seen over the galaxy. It shows in the SDSS image so is real.

To the west is SDSS J120531.04+310434.1, another very blue galaxy that seems to have a hole in the middle of it. I wish seeing was better, it could be due to unresolved arms and nothing more. I can find no redshift data for it. To the upper left of Arp 97 over halfway to the upper edge is a rather red disk galaxy. After all the blue ones it stands out. Its red color made me wonder if it was surprisingly far away. Since I was finding little red shift data in this area I didn't hold out much hope but I got a pleasant surprise. It is SDSS J120609.43+311002.8 and is 1.08 billion light years distant. It must be one huge spiral! Between it and a very bright star to its upper right is another very blue galaxy. It is CGO151 at about 400 million light years, too far to be related to Arp 97.

Things get rather interesting toward the NW (upper right). There's a quartet of rather interesting galaxies up there. The big one seen face-on is UGC 07064, an SAB(r) Seyfert galaxy. It is described as "no spiral structure with smooth disk" by one paper I found on it. There seems to be a nice ring around the faint bar and on the east side (left) a faint arm seems to spiral out and around in a clockwise direction ending at a field star. There also appears to be a tidal bulge to the disk on the west side. A faint linear plume appears to extend off the top of it toward the northeast passing just under the double galaxy. It is 353 million light years distant per its red shift the same as MCG+05-29-012 east of Arp 97. Below it is the odd spiral CGCG 158-10 at 373 million light years. A blue field star at its south end makes determining what is going on here difficult but I do see faint tidal distortions. One on the NE side going up to UGC 07064, the other on the west side going down. North of UGC 07064 is CGCG 158-011 A pair of galaxies. They appear to be interacting but I can find no redshift data on them so can't tell if they are related to either each other or the other two galaxies.

I moved Arp 97 east from center to include these 4 galaxies in the full frame.

Arp's image with the 200" Hale Telescope is at:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp97.jpeg

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

Related Designations for ARP097

ARP098

Arp 98 is a pair of interacting galaxies. Arp classed them under "Spiral galaxy with companion on arms: Elliptical galaxy companions." The spiral is PGC 5715 and is classed as Sbc at NED with a red shift distance of a bit less than 550 million light years. Seligman classifies it as Sbc? pec. One paper says "The 'bridge' has no relation to the normal spiral arms which are bound more tightly." I assume that refers to the bright tiny arms just visible in my shot. Still the bridge does appear to come off of one same as the opposite tidal arm comes off the other one. The elliptical galaxy is PGC 5714 and is called a red, spherical compact galaxy with halo. Seligman classifies it as E/S0. It has a red shift distance of a bit more than 550 million light years. The difference is likely due to gravitational interaction between the two. The spiral seems to have a small bright spiral then huge distorted spiral arms likely due to interaction with PGC 5714. I measure the extent of these arms as being nearly 170,000 light-years turning what would have been a small galaxy into an apparently large one though I suspect its mass is much less than the slightly smaller PGC 5714 which I measure as being about 140,000 light-years across.

At the far upper left is PGC 5484 at the same distance as PGC 5715 so a member of the group. It is classed simply as a spiral galaxy. Directly west (right) of Arp 98 is 2MASXi J0131394+320601 ID a galaxy bright in infrared light. Like all other galaxies in the image, I can find no data on it. Arp 98 is located in the constellation of Triangulum just north of the far more famous Triangulum Galaxy, M33.

I'd not made an annotated image but there is one faint asteroid in the image. I enhanced it on the annotated image as my processing from 2009 was so poor I nearly deleted it.

Arp's photo is at:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp98.jpeg

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

Related Designations for ARP098

ARP099

Arp 99 is in Arp's class "spiral galaxies with E galaxy companions on arms". His catalog entry has this rather odd comment considering his classification of it; "Connection not seen, but note difference in arms toward and away from E(lliptical) galaxy. Note also material between preceding spiral and E(lliptical) galaxy." He couldn't see any connecting arm yet it is classed as if such a connection was there. Arp is part of the 5 galaxy Hickson Compact Galaxy Group HCG 93.

Arp 99 is a double or triple galaxy group consisting of NGC 7547 on the right (Seligman says it isn't part of Arp 99 but most other sources say it is and Arp offset the two to include the third so I'm going with 3), NGC 7549 the unequal arm spiral at the top and NGC 7550 the highly torn apart elliptical like galaxy below it. The system is about 200+ million light-years away. Redshift puts them at 200, 200 and 210 million light-years distant respectively. That would seem to put the distorted elliptical well behind the other two. It's more likely that it's really at about the same distance but their relative motions create the differences.

There appears to be a fourth member of the group, NGC 7558, down and left of NGC 7550, but it is nearly 400 million light years distant so not involved. It is a nice face on Sa spiral in any case. Well, that's what NED says. The NGC Project says E-S0. NGC 7547 (R')SAB(s)0/a: pec at NED or more simply SBa pec by the NGC project. I prefer this latter classification. NGC 7579 is classed by NED as SB(s)cd pec with an Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) type not specified. NGC project calls it SBc pec. I prefer NED on this one. NGC 7550. NED classes NGC 7550 as S0- with an AGN while the NGC Project says E-S0. I'd think it rated a pec designation as well. The last NGC galaxy in the field is NGC 7553 due east of NGC 7549. It is classed by NED and the NGC Project as S0. Finally, they agree!

This field is outside the SDSS area so few galaxies have data on them at NED. So there's little data available. What little there is I've included in an annotated image. Two galaxies that had no distance data are listed as well. Normally I list galaxies that are identified only by position with just a G as the positional names really can clutter an image. This one had so little to work with that wasn't necessary.

I can add that NGC 7547 was discovered by John Herschel on August 26, 1827. NGC 7549 and NGC 7553 were discovered by Bindon Stoney on November 2, 1850. NGC 7558 was found by Albert Marth on November 3, 1864. William Herschel found NGC 7550 on September 18, 1784. However, it isn't in either of the Herschel 400 observing programs.

Arp's image:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp99.jpeg

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

Related Designations for ARP099

ARP100

Arp 100 is a pair of interacting galaxies, IC 18 and IC 19. Arp classified the pair under "spiral with elliptical galaxy companion". IC 18 is the interesting one. Probably an Sb galaxy before it had the misfortune of meeting up with IC 19 or some other galaxy. The passage drew out two tidal arms. IC 19 is a typical elliptical with sufficient mass and density that it was little distorted by the passage. It is the galaxy south and a bit east of IC 18. The pair is about 260 to 290 million light years from us. IC 18 without its tidal arms is only about 35 million light-years across, a small spiral galaxy. With its tidal arms, it is at least 220,000 light years across!

Between the two but far more distant is APMUKS(BJ) B002603.91-115232.3. I can find no distance data on it. That is the case with almost all the other galaxies in this image. The only one I could find anything on was LEDA 1719. This is the bright elliptical nearly directly west (right) of IC 18 and just above a bright star. It shows a red shift light travel distance of 275 million light years. So may be related to the two galaxies known as Arp 100. If you look closely you'll see many of the "stars" in this image are fuzzy and thus really very distant galaxies, nearly all uncatalogued.

Arp 18 and 19 were discovered by Stephane Javelle on August 31, 1892.

Arp's image: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp100.jpeg

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

Related Designations for ARP100

ARP101

Arp 101/UGC 10164-69/PGC 56938-53 is a pair of interacting galaxies in Serpens Caput just south of the main Hercules galaxy clusters. It is about 215-220 million light-years distant. UGC 10169 is the northern one with the straight tail that resembles one of the Mice, Arp 242. Arp didn't see the similarity it seems. He classed this pair under: Spiral Galaxies with Elliptical Galaxy Companions. The Mice he classed as: Appearance of Fission. To me, this shows how seriously he took tARP103-NGC6241-ZWICKY'S_CONNECTED_MULTIPLE_SYSTEM-ZWICKY'S_TRIPLETARP103-NGC6241-ZWICKY'S_CONNECTED_MULTIPLE_SYSTEM-ZWICKY'S_TRIPLEThe fission concept. Maybe to the point of believing it. In neither case were the huge plumes considered in the classification which I find interesting as well. Arp made no comment on this one. This appears to be a poorly studied pair as I found little on these two.

Only one other galaxy in my image appears to be related to the two galaxies making up Arp 101. That is CGCG 108-089. A blue spiral near the bottom of my image right of center. Virtually all the other galaxies in the image with redshift data are part of a group at about a half billion light-years. A bit over twice as distant as Arp 101. There's one galaxy cluster at 2.8 billion light-years marked by a bright cluster galaxy. Redshift data was only listed for the cluster and that was measured photographically rather than spectroscopically so not as accurate, especially for objects this close.

In processing the image I was struck by several bright blue stars. I suspected most were quasars but only one is so listed in NED. Nearly all quasars in NED have redshift data. Unfortunately, this one (left of Arp 101) wasn't one of them. Its label in the annotated image reads D? for distance unknown. Edit: Since this was written several years ago, a redshift has been determined and the annotated image edited to show a distance of 4.06 million light-years.

Redshift data is lacking for the vast number of galaxies in this image. I almost didn't prepare an annotated image.

In researching Arp Galaxies I come up with some rather odd links. Apparently, there's a musical group in England called Arp.101 and they use Arp's negative image of Arp 101 for their logo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNYG-_Yhs_Q

Arp's image
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp101.jpeg

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=5x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for ARP101

ARP102

Arp 102 is also known as Zwicky's Connected Galaxies, not to be confused with Arp 103 known as Zwicky's Connected Multiple System. This one was difficult to research. I found little on the galaxies involved and some catalogs have the position of one or more wrong. Few other galaxies in the field are cataloged and again when they were I found their positions often in error apparently due to incorrect precession calculation as ALADIN's image overlay was shifted in some areas in the direction of precession motion in this part of the sky. Not only that, NED and SIMBAD sometimes had different coordinates, neither of which were correct. I'm not sure if we have 2 or 3 galaxies here. The brightening in the southern end of the northern galaxy is listed as a separate galaxy in some catalogs, MCG+8-31-42 for example. It appears it could be a one-armed dwarf spiral. While I never found anything on it, it could be they are a merger in progress with that brightening being the remains of the cannibalized galaxy. This may explain the very large tidal tail to the north. Or it is just a star cloud in the galaxy.

The main galaxy is UGC 10814/PGC 60070 or VV10a, The possible galaxy at its south end is MCG+8-31-42 or VV10b. The brightening toward the north end of the big tidal arm is VV10c. So was it a separate galaxy at one time? I doubt it but can't say no either. UGC 10814 is classed as Sb. No peculiar designation. MCG+8-31-42 is classed as Sd. Again no peculiar designation. The southern large member is the E0 galaxy MCG +08-31-041/PGC 60067. It is noted to be a Seyfert and LINER galaxy. Its core is quite active probably due to its interaction with UGC 10814.

This system is about 327 million light-years distant in northern Hercules. Arp's comment: "Note loop E side of spiral; diffuse, very faint connection to E galaxy." The loop is very blue in my image. The last part makes no sense to me. If he is using the spiral as his reference (UGC 10814) then the elliptical that is connected by a very faint tidal arm is southwest not east.

About 6 minutes east and a bit south of UGC 10814 is what appears to be a pair of interacting blue galaxies. The southwest galaxy is LEDA 140772. A second object is listed at NED but with a larger error circle, GALEXASC J171958.88+490054.8 that either refers to both or one but which one? I can't tell. I can't find anything more on these. A bit below it is a blue star with a tiny anonymous galaxy to its right. Below this is a fairly red galaxy. There's a star to its left and a starlike galaxy above this star making a compact triangle. If you precess their coordinates back about 1990 coordinates instead of 2000 you come to the positions in SIMBAD for 1E 1718.6+4902 a Seyfert galaxy and CIG 1719+48. NED lists the Seyfert as MS 1718.6+4902 with a position 20" south and a bit west but the magnitude and Seyfert classification is correct. Nothing is seen at NED's position even though it is listed as magnitude 19.1 which should show easily. If they are the same then it is 2.4 billion light years. Its color is typical of galaxies at that distance. The galaxy to its NE is not in NED. SIMBAD lists it as CIG 1719+48. The numbers designate their RA and Declination but are not accurate enough to settle this position issue. Positions of the two catalogs are different epochs. This is why the northern galaxy appears to be the southern one. It is J2000 while the other appears to be B1950. Dennis Webb tells me issues like this delayed their book on the Arp galaxies by 3 years. I can fully appreciate this!

The largest galaxy besides those in Arp 102 is 2MFGC 13790 which is east of the southern galaxy of Arp 102. It is an obvious edge on spiral. But I have no distance information on it. Above it is a pair of galaxies that may be interacting or just along the same line of sight. Unfortunately, they are anonymous in both NED and SIMBAD. The Sky does say one of them, probably the western one, is PGC 2331580 Unfortunately, this is the case with the rest of the galaxies in the image. Only about 4 are listed with little useful data but for coordinates, all in the 2MASX survey of infrared galaxies.

No Hubble or SDSS image is available.

Arp's image:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp102.jpeg

14" LX200R 14" f/10, L=4x10' RGB=3x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for ARP102

ARP103

Arp 103 is also known as Zwicky's Connected Multiple System or Zwicky's Triplet depending on who you read. It consists of three galaxies. They have many different designations, none all that common. NED prefers UGC 10586 Notes 3, UGC 10586 Notes 4 and UGC 10586 Noted 5. Also in the image are UGC 10586, UGC 10586 Notes 1 and UGC 10586 Notes 2. So by the UGC, it is a 6 galaxy system. UGC 10586 notes 2 is better known as NGC 6241. These galaxies are located in the constellation of Hercules at a distance of about 425 million light years. It consists of two southern galaxies, Notes 3 and 4 and a northern galaxy 2.5 minutes north. A faint arm connects Notes 3 and 5. Several knots are seen in it. About halfway between the two is another faint arm running at nearly right angles to the connecting arm which contains a broad extension on the western side. It makes the lower galaxy look much like the Umbrella Galaxy, Arp 189. I can't see it continuing beyond this point, rather the plume from the northern galaxy comes down to meet it. Thus there may be no true connection. The horizontal bar is only hinted at in Arp's image but appears rather obvious in mine. Also not seen well in Arp's image is the large splash of stars that surrounds the southern pair. The knots in the connecting arm appear somewhat blue indicating new stars.

Arp classed this triplet under Elliptical and elliptical-like galaxies connected to spirals. NED classes the three galaxies as: Notes 3 SAB(rs)0+ pec, Notes 4 S0 pec: and Notes 5 as SAB0^+(rs) pec in one reference. None are listed as elliptical but one is S0. So elliptical like fits but which is the spiral? His only comment just says: "Incomplete connection, blue knots in south member." My image seems to show the connection is complete, not only in the narrow tail but a fainter broad tail as well.

You've probably guessed the other two major galaxies in the image are two of the three other parts of the UGC 10586 system. The bright spiral east of Arp 103 is UGC 10586 Notes 2, better known as NGC 6241, an Sbc spiral with lots of bright knots in its arms. They are more white than blue. Still, it looks like an active galaxy. Its redshift distance puts it at about 410 million light-years. The difference is likely just due to orbital motion about the groups center of gravity and really at about the same distance as Arp 103. NGC 6241 was discovered by William Herschel on April 29, 1788 but isn't in either of the Herschel 400 observing programs.

UGC 10586 is the remaining face on spiral further east than NGC 6241. Why do all of these appear to be face on? The note at NED for this galaxy belongs with Arp 103, not this galaxy. UGC 10586 is a face on Sb spiral that has a rather faint arm compared to the others. Apparently, that wasn't odd enough to make Arp's catalog. Sure seems unusual to me. It has a redshift distance of 424 million light-years, same as Arp 103.

So where is UGC 10586 Notes 1? It is the small blue galaxy just beyond the northeast edge of UGC 10586 near a bright yellow-white star. It seems rather distorted with both a blue and white region with an arm jutting out the south side. I can't find any distance or classification on this one. The red galaxy to the southwest of UGC 10586 is 2MASX J16504319+4523545, again not much on it. Why it too isn't listed as part of the UGC 10586 system I don't know.

Unfortunately, this paucity of information pertains to the rest of the image. Even though the SDSS lists nearly 3000 galaxies in this field only 5 of the 6 members of the UGC 10586 system have any redshift data at the time this was written.

ARP103-NGC6241-ZWICKY'S_CONNECTED_MULTIPLE_SYSTEM-ZWICKY'S_TRIPLET

Arp's image is at:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp103.jpeg

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

Related Designations for ARP103