ARP236

Arp 236 is a pair of colliding galaxies in southwestern Cetus below my normal -15 degree cut off. Seeing was poor but I had to give it a try. Transparency even worse. My normal limiting magnitude is about 22.5. It is 19.5 here, three below normal. This is why the sky seems so devoid of stars and other galaxies. Conditions such as these are normal this low in my sky, especially this time of the year. Arp put it in his odd category of "Appearance of Fission". Besides IC 1623 he also included IC 1622 to the southwest in his image centering between the two. His comment reads: "Faint outer arm curves around through 270º." I don't really see this arm in Arp's photo but even under my horrid conditions, it does show in mine. Due to the noisy conditions, it is seen better in the full-size image rather than the enlarged cropped image. While he included IC 1622 in his image he makes no mention of it in the atlas. NED shows the distance to IC 1623 as about 260 million light-years and 280 million light-years for IC 1622. So they are likely related.

IC 1623 is considered to be two merging galaxies rather than splitting as Arp's category would indicate. IC 1623A, on the right, is classed as S Pec.? NGC 1623B is not classified. In fact, I can't quite determine which parts belong to which. What about the 2 red blobs in my image? They look much like H alpha not the gold of old core region stars.

Fortunately, the HST has imaged this one. http://hubblesite.org/image/2282/news_release/2008-16

The image is rotated with west up rather than north up in my image. I find the two images somewhat hard to reconcile as to the red blobs. They are separated by a bright region not seen in my image. I believe the low resolution is to blame for some of the problems. If I ever get better seeing down this low I'll have to give it another try. Note too that the HST text puts the pair at 300 million light-years, further than the redshift indicates. They say it will turn into something similar to Arp 220. They make no mention of IC 1622. Both IC 1622 and 1623 were discovered by Lewis Swift on November 19, 1897.

There's very little on this field at NED. The faint fuzzy blue galaxy directly west of Arp 236 is PGC 003973. The lighter blue, smaller galaxy north-northeast of Arp 236 is APMUKS(BJ) B010526.55-174218.1. The somewhat normal looking galaxy near the left edge directly east of Arp 236 is 2MASX J01083536-1729237. None have any distance data. The only other object with redshift data is a star-like object. Go straight north (up) from Arp 236 to near the top. You will see two rather obvious blue stars, the upper is bluer and a bit to the right of perfectly vertical. On either side of it are two orange objects. They make a squat "T". The upper and bluest object is GALEX 2674480679352274903. This tells you it is a strong UV object since that's what the GALEX orbiting telescope studied. It is also listed as XBS J010747.2-172044. This indicates it is an X-ray source as well. It is also listed as a galaxy. It is likely a quasar as well though none of the listings say this. GALEX lists it as an Ultraviolet Excess Source. Most of these turn out to be quasars. NED classes it as an AGN1 galaxy, not a quasar. Just one with a very active nucleus (black hole). But it is so active it is this brightness at the distance of 7.7 billion light-years. That puts it at quasar brightness.

The image contains one asteroid, (188866) 2006 UC150 with a listed estimated magnitude of 19.1. It looks a bit brighter than this to me. It is hard to find. Look southeast (lower left) of Arp 236 about 40% of the way to the corner. It angles down and to the right.

Arp's image
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp236.jpeg

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

Related Designations for ARP236

ARP237

Arp 237 is part of the Hickson 38 galaxy group. It is a 4 galaxy group with Arp 237 being two. The third is the spiral to the southwest. These three are a physical group. The fourth, Hickson 38D to the west-northwest of Arp 237 is a line of sight member of the group being over nearly three times as distant at almost 1.1 billion light-years. The pair constituting Arp 237, UGC 05044 or Hickson 38B and 38C, as well as the third physical member, Hickson 38A, CGCG 062-036 are all about 410 million light-years distant.

NED classes both members of Arp 237 as S? galaxies one place but another says the western member is SBd while the eastern is Im. S? seems more like it to me for both. Arp put them in his class: Galaxies: Appearance of Fission. His comment reads: "Knots in arm as large, not quite as bright as nucleus." I assume he means the two blue knots in the western member (Hickson 38B). Though I don't see them as nearly as bright as the nucleus, even in Arp's blue sensitive image. Though there they are brighter than in my or the SDSS images. The nucleus of the eastern member seems double. The SDSS image hints that this is an illusion and the elongation is a blue star-forming region tight to the core of the galaxy. My color data wasn't sufficient to separate it from the core.

Hickson 38D, the distant member is classed as SBa by NED. It is an IR emitting galaxy cataloged as 2MASX J09273421+1218053. Hickson 38A is listed as Sbc.

This is another field covered by the SDSS that has no redshift data except for the Hickson 38 group itself and a candidate galaxy cluster NSC J092805+122404 at a photographic redshift of about 2.4 billion light-years. You can find it easily west of the bright late G star near the western edge a bit north of Arp 237. There's a lot of faint fuzzies in that area. Though the center position seems off to the NW of what appears the center in my image by a couple minutes of arc. Still, I think this is what it refers to.

There are two asteroids in the image. The brighter and easiest to see is west of Hickson 38A a bit less than 3 minutes of arc and is just beyond a fainter star. That one is (195646) 2002 NN36 at magnitude 19.1. The other is 5 minutes south of Arp 237 just above a faint round galaxy. It is (233778) 2008 TK164. At magnitude 20 it is a bit hard to spot. You will likely have to enlarge the image and possibly brighten your screen to find it. When I have many asteroids in the image I process the image such that they are not reduced in brightness due to being in only one frame of 4 at the same position when the data is combined. This normally reduces their brightness by a factor of 4. When I have a lot of asteroids I use a "lighten" combine that picks up the brightest pixel of each image in the stack. All but the asteroids is then deleted and this pasted on top of the normal combine image. 69That's a lot of work so I didn't do it for this image. I spent the day blowing snow from my 1 km road instead. It's one snow storm after another right now.

Arp's image
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp237.jpeg

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

Related Designations for ARP237

ARP238

Arp 238/UGC 8335 is a pair of galaxies in northeastern Ursa Major about 425 million light-years distant. Arp put it in his category of galaxies with the appearance of fission. Just the opposite of what is likely really happening. His comment is apparently in error. He says: "Double nuclei, north nucleus has third arm." His image is oriented east up. Mine is north up. Hubble's image I've linked to is also east up. In the east up images, there is a third arm from the top (south) galaxy's core. Only 2 from the bottom (north) core. I wonder if Arp thought his image was north up when he made that comment. Normally he marks a V on the images' north side. In this case, the V is on the south side, likely leading to his error. Otherwise, I can't make sense out of it. I never could fathom his fission category either. These are merging not fissioning galaxies. That wasn't understood at his time it appears. He also had one for material ejected from nuclei. Later in life, he decided quasars were ejected from galaxies rather than the active nuclei of galaxies so far away only the accretion disk and possibly the jet from the core can be seen with the galaxy being lost in the glare. Today we have techniques to bring out the hidden galaxy that didn't exist in Arp's day. Still, his theories bordered on (some, would say "were" rather than "bordered on") quackery and got him kicked off the 200" telescope. I can't help but wonder if these categories, fission and ejection are related to this idea. Still, he was using appearance as his guide as no one knew for sure what was going on. His initial purpose for the atlas was to jump-start research into these peculiar galaxies in the hope it would lead to better understanding of how galaxies behave and evolve. He later used it to try and support his quasar ideas. Like Jerry Lewis, he was only appreciated in France. He lives there today last I knew. Edit: Since I wrote this he died December 28, 2013.

The true northern galaxy (upper right in my image) is classed by NED as Sc with a LINER spectrum and a general weak HII emission. Likely this is gas ejected by the encounter and now glowing from the many new super hot blue stars in both galaxies. The southeastern galaxy is also listed as Sc with HII emission but a note at NED says it is mostly in the core and that its core marks it as a starburst galaxy. Not surprising with such a strong interaction going on. NED, however, makes no mention of it being a starburst galaxy.

The full-scale Hubble image makes it appear the third arm is not in the same plane as the others but is headed mostly toward us rather at near right angles to the plane of the other arms. This could be pure illusion but the stars of it are clearly crossing the upper right area of the main disk turning it blue when it otherwise would be rather red in color. The stars of this arm are bluer than the other arms. When I first saw it in my image I thought this excess blue was due to bad color data as a rather bright moon rose while the color was being taken and was quite strong when the blue was taken. This is something I try to avoid but failed to notice at the time. But both Hubble's image and the SDSS confirm this so I didn't let it alter my processing any. I might have had I not had those to check. I gotta learn to trust my data. To me, it appears this "third" arm is really a continuation of the east arm of the northern galaxy seen in front of the southern galaxy. Could the odd stub from the northern nucleus be part of the arm of the southern galaxy? Hard to tell even from the HST image.

Sometimes the inclusions and omissions from the Sloan catalog drive me batty. To give an example I've marked three galaxies in my image that are in the Hubble frame and are very obvious galaxies. Heck in my image I was sure from the PSF of them they were galaxies. None of the 3 are in NED's database which includes the Sloan survey of this field. But a very obscure 22nd magnitude galaxy in the Sloan survey is in the catalog though without redshift data. So how does this faint smudge make it in while far brighter galaxies don't? Wish I knew. Others I'd like to know about like SDSS J131522.78+620741.5 are in the catalog (and marked by name in my annotated image) but are without redshift. Are they related to the other background galaxies I and Hubble picked up that are of about the same angular size? No way to know, unfortunately.

At the top center of the image is the core of a galaxy cluster. NED shows a rather obscure galaxy at its core rather than a huge cD as is normally the case. I've labeled it G/CG followed by the redshift distance of both. While they differ this is more due to rounding than a real difference as the cluster shown at 1.0 is at a redshift of 1.049 and the galaxy shown at 1.053. If I'd have used one more decimal point they'd be the same. The cluster is [YSS2008] 464 ([YSS2008] = Yoon+Schawinski+Sheen [not Charlie]). NED shows it as richness class 4 and gives no diameter. In any case, there are quite a few galaxies with a redshift distance of 1 to 1.1 billion light-years in the image. I suppose most all are considered members or is it just those at the top of the page? Wish I knew.

A second more distant cluster is centered to the top right of my image. It is MaxBCG J198.60277+62.32938 with a membership of 27. It and its anchor galaxy are both 1.7 billion light-years distant. Again no diameter is given. Much of the image contains galaxies at about 1.7 billion light-years that are likely members of the cluster. The SDSS identifies a different center of a galaxy cluster also at 1.7 billion light-years just west of the MaxBCG cluster. Are they the same cluster? NED has no information I can use to determine this. Seems they are likely the same just defined differently. SDSS-C4 3093 is its designation.

Arp's image
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp238.jpeg

Hubble image:
http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/large/heic0810al.jpg

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

Related Designations for ARP238

ARP239

Arp 239 is a pair of interacting spirals of the M51 type per notes at NED. It consists of two galaxies, NGC 5279 and 5278 (left to right--east to west). It appears they have a common arm that isn't just a perspective feature, or so several papers indicate. Arp notes "smaller galaxy is fairly symmetric spiral". Oddly that is what it appears to be in his image yet in mine the western arm seems smaller and tighter to the core than the eastern one. Color may have something to do with the different appearance. NGC 5278 appears to be a typical one-armed spiral. As to the common arm, it appears more a tidal blob between two arms than a real arm, at least in my image. A supernova was seen in the western galaxy in 2001.

Arp put this one in his category for galaxies: Appearance of fission. As if he saw this as one galaxy splitting into two. This entire category of 14 entries mystifies me. Did he really think they were splitting? I've never been able to answer that question. William Herschel found the larger galaxy, NGC 5278 on April 14, 1789 but missed the companion. It is too faint to have made either Herschel 400 observing programs. The companion, NGC 5279 was found by his son John Herschel on May 4, 1831.

There was this interesting note at NED: "The main specific feature of this system are (sic) strongly noncoincident positions and radial velocities of the dynamic and photometric centers of both components (3" and 100 km s^-1^ for NGC 5278 and 6" and 20 km s^-1^ for NGC 5279, respectively). A detailed photometric analysis of the system performed by Mazzarella and Boroson (1993) revealed a number of regions or spots of enhanced brightness and the brightest of them is located in the satellite. The strong difference between the dynamic and photometric centers mentioned above may be explained by a similar inhomogeneity of the photometric properties of the two components. The latter may be due, in turn, to the interaction between the galaxies."

Apparently, thanks to the interaction the rotation of the galaxies is no longer centered on the brightest core of each galaxy though it appears there's no agreement exactly where these rotation centers are in the galaxies. In other words, colliding galaxies really make a mess of things until they finally settle down in a few hundred million years.

NGC 5278 is classed as SA(s)b? pec while NGC 5279 is SB(s)a pec. Though some notes class both as Sc. Redshift data is similar for both putting them 350 million light-years distant. They are located in the constellation of Ursa Major, about halfway between Mizar and M101. Mizar-Alcor point right at it for those who want to try and find it visually.

Being in Ursa Major there are a lot of other galaxies in the image. I'll point out just a few of them. Down and right of Arp 239 is UGC 08671 also at 350 million light-years. It seems a bit strange for a spiral and may have been involved in an interaction with another galaxy sometime in the past. To its north, completing the triangle is MCG +09-22-094 at 540 million light-years. Obviously not related to the Arp group. Just to its right is a small IR galaxy SDSS J134115.89+554053.2 at 1.6 billion light-years. Down and to the right is a bright barred spiral with faint looping arms. It is the IR galaxy SDSS J134031.48+553543.4 at 500 million light-years. The tiny red galaxy to its left is SDSS J134043.68+553558.7 at 1.8 billion light-years.

There are a lot of galaxies in the lower left quadrant of my image. The largest and brightest is a rather white elliptical closest to Arp 239. It may be IC 922. NED says its identification is uncertain but gives no details. It is just under 900 million light-years distant. To its left is the tiny compact galaxy SDSS J134305.74+553554.0 at a bit over 900 million light-years. Further left is a much bigger elliptical that could be IC 0923. Again its identification is uncertain. It is about 900 million light-years distant. Above it is an edge on or SO galaxy that may be IC 925 at a bit over 900 million light-years. Again ID is uncertain per NED. This seems to be a broken record as to uncertainty and distance! If you are getting the feeling a galaxy cluster is involved you are right. It is Abell 1783. At least I'm certain about that identification. It has a diameter of 30 minutes of arc and is considered to be centered a bit below and left of the galaxies I did identify. Thus it is mostly out of my frame. NED puts it at a distance of about 920 billion light-years though one note indicates a redshift putting it far closer. That appears unlikely looking at the galaxies that are in my image.

Not all galaxies in the lower left, however, are members of Abell 1783. For instance, the bright somewhat red elliptical near the bottom edge and a bit right of the previous region may be IC 919 at only 480 million light-years. Yep, another uncertain ID. Right beside it to its lower right is the IR galaxy SDSS J134245.98+553107.0 also at 480 million light-years. To their right is the near edge on spiral that might be IC 918 which is about 940 million light-years distant and thus part of the Abell group. Appearances can be deceiving it would appear. I could go on but you get the idea. Instead, I've included an annotated image with these and others noted. Also, there's a second galaxy cluster just beyond the eastern edge of the image which includes IC 926 (ID uncertain -- of course) on the very eastern edge. It is SDSS-C4-DR3 3007 which includes some 33 members. It is centered on IC 929 just east of IC 926. Of course, NED lists its identity as uncertain as well. If I'd have put Arp 239 to the upper right in the image I could have picked up more of both clusters. I didn't realize either were nearby, unfortunately. Note the two quasars in the toward the upper right corner.

Some passing clouds during the blue and one luminosity frame cause moderately bright stars to be somewhat distorted. I tried to tame them as much as possible. I do need to reshoot this under better conditions. Still, the galaxy itself was little bothered by the clouds as its light was totally blocked while they were passing by. The nice thing about not guiding, it saves subs from passing clouds. When clouds hit it doesn't cause the guider to go nuts trying to find the star so picks up right where it left off once the clouds pass.

I've attached a black and white Hubble image made from near IR and UV data. Without visual color data, I didn't try to make a color image out of it. The UV data makes the new star formation very bright. Also since these areas are dusty and that is heated by the new stars these areas were also bright in UV as well. Thus it won't look like my visual light image. The SDSS image includes some IR data so it too is a bit different than my image but without the UV that doesn't get through our atmosphere the new star regions are similar to my shot.

Sorry about the font on the annotated image. Somehow my default got changed to something a bit odd and I didn't catch it in time.

I've also attached a cropped image of just Arp 239 at 0.65 seconds per pixel to better show its details.

Arp's image:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp239.jpeg

14" LX200R@ f/15, L=4x10 RGB=2x10x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for ARP239

ARP240

Arp 240 consists of two spiral galaxies pulling material out of each other making a bridge between the two. Arp classified them under "Appearance of Fission". This is the same classification of "The Mice" and "Antennae" galaxies. Located some 300 million light-years from us I didn't get a lot of detail but you can see the bridge that connects the two galaxies. The two galaxies are NGC 5257 (right) and NGC 5258. About the same time I was taking this Hubble released a series of such colliding galaxies that included this pair. Here's a link to Hubble's image of this pair with a bit more about them.
http://hubblesite.org/image/2291/news_release/2008-16g

NGC 5257 (right galaxy) is listed at NED as SAB(s)b pec;HII LIRG LIRG stands for Luminous Infra Red Galaxy. This usually means there's a lot of star formation going on behind dust that the stars heat creating the infrared light. NGC 5258 on the left is classified by NED as SA(s)b: pec;HII LINER. They were discovered by William Herschel on May 13, 1793 but didn't make either of the Herschel 400 observing programs.

Arp's image: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp240.jpeg

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

Related Designations for ARP240

ARP241

Arp 241/UGC 9425 is sometimes known as Segner's Wheel. Looks more like spinning tadpoles to me. It is located in central Bootes at a distance of about 475 million light-years. Arp classed it under "Appearance of Fission." It's more a dance of death and rebirth as these two galaxies swirl about each other and likely will merge in the future to become an elliptical galaxy. The merger may have already happened but we won't see it for several hundred million years. Arp saw it as appearing to be the reverse, one galaxy that appears to be splitting into two. That doesn't necessarily mean he thought this was what was happening. He wanted to draw attention to unusual galaxies and the puzzles they create. Such a description could serve this purpose. I just don't know.

According to Kanipe and Webb the name "Segner's Wheel" is probably named for "...the 18th-century Slovak scientist Janos Andras Segner, considered the father of the water turbine. Segner also built observatories at two of his academic posts." I'd never heard any of this before.

A third galaxy at the same redshift is seen to the northwest of Arp 241. It doesn't appear to have interacted with Arp 241.

The center of the 2 billion light-year galaxy cluster Abell 1944 is a few minutes south of Arp 245. I've marked the center on the annotated image. Most of the galaxies appear to the west of the center, however. At least I assume most of these faint galaxies are part of the cluster. NED shows it as 10 minutes in diameter. To its northwest is another Abell cluster, Abell 1941, at a distance of 1.2 billion light-years and a size of 14 minutes. I don't really see it but have also marked its center as defined in NED. Then to make things even more interesting there's the ZwCl 1435.5+3037 galaxy cluster toward the southwest end of the chain of galaxies of Abell 1944. It is said to be 17 minutes in diameter and contain some 180 members. It is shown as Distance Class VD. That stands for Very Distant, Extremely Distant is the only class more distant but I can't translate this into redshift or a time travel distance. It likely is much the same cluster but with a larger cutoff radius as Abell 1944. Anyone know for sure?

Just to add to the galaxy cluster confusion further to the southwest we come to the galaxy cluster MaxBCG J219.37724+30.37448 which is shown centered on a galaxy of the same name which is noted at NED as being a bright cluster galaxy. The cluster has an estimated distance of 2 billion light-years, no given diameter and a member count of 19. So how does this fit the others? My head hurts. But it gets worse. Just off the bottom of my image almost directly below Abell 1944 is Abell 1943 which is 12 minutes in diameter and thus extends into the southern part of the image. There's no distance for it other than the note it is distance class 6. This puts its members in the 17.3 to 18 magnitude range for the tenth brightest cluster member. Since it is richness class 2 -- 80 to 129 members I'm not sure how that helps much other than the most distant class is 7 for all below 18th magnitude. How this translates to distance is beyond me. On average I suppose fainter is more distant. Is that true of the 10th brightest member? Now I really have a headache.

Migraine time! In the upper right corner is the galaxy and galaxy cluster MaxBCG J219.17017+30.59602. The anchor galaxy is quite large but has no redshift measurement that I could find. The estimate for the cluster is 1.5 billion light-years but all around it are galaxies of 1.3 billion light-years by redshift. Are these members? The cluster is described in NED as having 15 members, no size is given. Several more galaxy clusters are to be found around the edges of this image that likely extend into it but enough is enough. I've used up my painkiller supply just getting this far.

I do find it surprising there were no quasars in the image considering how deep it goes. One was just off the image to the south but NED listed none within the image. But as there are a couple very distant galaxies at 4 and 4.2 billion light-years in the frame.

One blue frame was severely hurt by haze or something. I used it anyway but maybe I shouldn't have. It seems to have hurt color more than helping. I didn't go back and try with only the good blue frame or retake it.

Arp's image
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp241.jpeg

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

Related Designations for ARP241

ARP242

ARP 242/NGC 4676/The Mice is a famous pair of interacting galaxies in northern Coma Berenices about 300 light-years distant. While the NGC designation applies to both galaxies the northern one is IC 819 and the southern IC 820. This apparently was because William Herschel saw it as one object though did note it as a "possibly bi-nuclear" nebula when he found it on March 13, 1785 but Rudolf Spitaler recognized two when he recorded it over a century later on March 20, 1892. He recorded it as IC 0819 and IC 0820. It didn't make either of the Herschel 400 observing programs.

Arp put it in his category for galaxies with the appearance of fission. It should be the appearance of colliding. While they are obviously interacting as shown by their long tidal tails but I can't say from the image if they are actually colliding or just passing by. Most papers say they either have already or will collide and merge after whirling about their center of gravity several times. NED classifies the northern galaxy simply as Irr AGN and the southern one as SB(s)0/a pec AGN. Arps comment on this entry reads: "Very thin bright tail from north nucleus which has strong absorption."

One simulation of their interaction shows they will merge the next time around. While seen from our perspective you can see the "straight" tail of the northern galaxy is straight only due to our perspective. It is really broad and curved the same as the southern one. Its brightness may be mainly due to it appearing much thinner from our perspective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjjRfOT87Wc A Hubble image can be seen at http://hubblesite.org/image/1191/news_release/2002-11

This data was taken in 2007 and reprocessed several times. Fortunately, it was taken on a good night when I could work at 0.5" per pixel as my imaging skills were poor in 2007. Reprocessing can help but can't make up for my poor techniques back in 2007. I need to retake this one. For now, this will have to do.

Arp's image: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp242.jpeg

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x20x1' RGB=2x10'x2, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for ARP242

ARP243

Arp 243, aka NGC 2623 is thought to be the result of a merger of two or maybe three galaxies. Arp, however, classes it under "Galaxies (not classifiable as S or E): Appearance of fission. Fission is the splitting of an object while fusion is the joining. So if mainstream science is right he has this exactly backward though he is talking about appearance not necessarily what's really going on. He does think disturbed galaxies like this one eject objects, especially what we call quasars. To him, quasars are nearby objects ejected from disturbed galaxies and the redshift somehow relates to their age of creation. Something about electrons gaining mass through "communication" with the rest of the universe. He actually puts it in scientific terms that take him out of the total crackpot class but it did cost him his access to the 200" scope and sent him packing to Europe when his ideas seemed a bit more accepted. To him, low mass electrons would show spectral lines with less energy than those created at the time of the Big Bang (another concept he doesn't accept the same way as other astronomers). Thus, the lines appear redshifted same as they would due to distance. Since electrons can be created in atom smashers and those show no hint of low-mass his theories don't get much attention though he claims such electrons, being created from "old" protons colliding, this is to be expected, it is only those created out of pure energy that somehow aren't tainted by "old mass" that would show this effect. OK, maybe he is a crackpot. Anyway, this idea of galaxies ejecting things, especially disturbed ones, does add to his fission classification.

NED classes it as simply Pec; LINER, LIRG Seyfert 2. Meaning its central region is very active creating lots of stars heating dust to make it a luminous IR Galaxy. The problem is it has no central core that anyone can identify. Seems it hasn't settled down enough from the merger(s) for one to fully develop. Normally I see LINER and Seyfert 2 galaxies but it is one or the other. Sometimes papers argue over which it is. Here we have both. Again, an indication of an, as yet, incomplete merger? My guess anyway. Notes at NED are interesting here. One says: "NGC 2623 (Arp 243), appearing eighth in the Toomre sequence, is, like ARP 220, a superluminous IRAS galaxy, and is also very bright in the radio. Very long tails are visible but the central masses have become indistinguishable. Only one true nucleus is thought to exist."

Another: "NGC 2623 is a well-studied triple system included in Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies (Arp 1966). Bright tidal tails are observed in both the optical and near-infrared; these tails suggest that a merger has occurred. The parent nuclei have not been resolved in either the radio or near-infrared."

A final note: "NGC 2623 NGC 2623 is a nearly completed merger showing an r^1/4^ profile at K band (Wright et al. 1990; Stanford & Bushouse 1991; Chitre & Jog 2002) and two long tidal tails."

There seems a bit of a discrepancy as to its distance. Its redshift would indicate a distance of about 260 million light-years. But in 1999 a type 1a supernova was seen in this galaxy, SN 1999gd. These are considered a "standard candle" for estimating distance as it is thought astronomers have a good handle on how to determine their true brightness. Since they are thought to have about the same brightness. There's some variation due to the "metal" content and other factors such as rotation rate of the star but this is rather easily handled. Using SN 1999gd as a reference the galaxy is further away than its redshift would indicate, about 332 million light-years. A rather large difference. The field has a smattering of distant galaxies and one galaxy cluster toward the east side that shows as a group of tiny orange ovals arranged at various angles way behind a few blue foreground stars. It is MaxBCG J129.83536+25.77318 and is about 2.8 billion light-years distant. It is listed as having 17 members, though I see more than that. The MaxBCG catalog contains some 13,800 galaxy clusters found on analysis of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data. They combed the data for galaxies with the same red color in a small area. It is thought to be fairly accurate at finding clusters as intergalactic reddening should be rather consistent over a small area of sky. Thus a lot of galaxies with the same reddening are likely at the same distance thus indicating a true cluster.

The only other galaxy of any angular size in the image is the large red elliptical north east of Arp 234. It is 2MASX J08383858+2550212 at 1.1 billion light-years. Nearly all the other galaxies in the image I could find data on are at least that distant. There is one lonely quasar at a bit over 10 billion light years in the image shining like one of many dim blue stars in the image. I mention it as Arp thinks way too many quasars are found around his disturbed galaxies. Though in his theory those near the galaxy have a large redshift and those further are older and thus the electrons more massive and thus they show a lower redshift. Since none of those he cited originally have a redshift even half of this one and it isn't all that close to the galaxy it just doesn't fit his theory. To find it follow the line of the lower right tidal arm past a small vertical lenticular galaxy. It is the first nearly 19th magnitude blue star after that. A bit right and up from a brighter blue star.

ARP 243 is located in Cancer. My image was taken November 26, 2008. ARP 243 was discovered On January 19, 1885 by Édouard Stephan.

Arp's excellent image of this galaxy is at:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp243.jpeg
SDSS image:
http://astronomerica.awardspace.com/SDSS-17/NGC2623.php

While Hubble has imaged this galaxy, no cleaned up color image of it has been released that I could find. So I went into their data base, found filtered images that could make a fairly good color image and made my own. It was exposed for the core, the tidal wings were severely under exposed so I only used the high-resolution WFPC 2 small chip for this image. It is a bit reduced from the original 800x800 image, mostly due to my cropping it but I did reduce it about 10% as well to hide some cosmetic defects thanks to cosmic rays that I couldn't clone out without making it obvious. Still, I think it shows the core region very well. It is oriented north up same as my image so you should be able to at least recognize major features in my image. Due to the filters not being true RGB filters, it is way too blue, I just didn't have red and green data that I could manipulate to give a "true color" image. The images weren't taken to create a true color image and not knowing the shape of each filter's skirts after a lot of trial and error, mostly the latter, this is the best I could do.

Edit: Since that was written HST images of it have been released. A good example is found here: http://cseligman.com/text/atlas/ngc2623hst.jpg

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

Related Designations for ARP243

ARP244

Arp 244/NGC4038-9 are almost too low for my scope to see. Certainly too low to see clearly being below my normal 15 degree south limit. But they are so interesting I had to try anyway. These are known as the Antenna, clamshell or Ring Tail Galaxies. NGC 4038 and 4039 are a much-pictured pair of colliding galaxies. Massive star birth has been triggered by the collision and huge tidal arms (the antennae) pulled out of them. When galaxies collide the dust and gas do collide but the stars do not. They are just far too small and too far apart for that to happen. But the gravity field is so strong that it can tear stars out of the galaxies and throw them across the universe as seen in the two tails of these galaxies. If your monitor can see into the darkness well enough you can see the lower (longer tail) actually starts to curve back on itself. These two are thought to be about 65 million light-years away in the constellation of Corvus. The Hubble telescope took this photo of the upper galaxy in my shot (NGC 4039). http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/1997/34/images/d/formats/full_jpg.jpg and http://cseligman.com/text/atlas/ngc4038noao.jpg
Hubble can resolve individual stars in a galaxy at this distance thanks to not having to look through our atmosphere.

Due to clouds, I had very limited color data which shows up as rather blotchy in color. Two asteroids decided to wander through my view
Upper left: (15297) 1992 CF Mag 16.4
Lower left: (54283) 2000 JG48 Mag 17.2

The "stars" you see in the galaxies are really huge clusters of supermassive stars created by the collision. Some are still shrouded in their Hydrogen and dust cloud from which they formed. The hydrogen glowing its characteristic pink-red color. Others have completely used up the hydrogen and glow blue though some hydrogen emission can be seen on their edges. Note I've pushed the color to extremes here to show these features. The true colors would be much more muted if your eyes could actually see them. Which they never could from any vantage point as they would be just too faint.

The galaxies were discovered by William Herschel on February 7, 1785 and are in the original Herschel 400 observing program. My notes from that made on April 16, 1985 using my 10" f/5 at 50x hampered by how low it was even in Nebraska and the extinction from high humidity reads "Large, fairly easy object, mottled a little brighter toward the center. This was limited to NGC 4038 as 4039 wasn't in the program. I didn't see the tails.

This was taken back early 2007 when my imaging techniques were poor. It is severely photon starved. I've had it on the redo list for years but conditions just haven't made this possible. Until then this will have to do.

Arp's image: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp244.jpeg

14" LX 200R @ f/10, L=6x5' RGB=1x5', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for ARP244

ARP245

Arp 245/NGC 2992-3 is a great pair of interacting galaxies in Hydra. Redshift puts them at about 125 million light-years but most papers are going with the Tully-Fisher distance of 100 million light-years. In any case, they are close and large enough to actually make an interesting pair to image. Arp put them in his category galaxies with the appearance of fission. I think he only meant they appeared to be dividing not that they really were. Of course, they are now known to be interacting galaxies that may be merging rather than splitting. Arp's comment on these is; "Very faint diffuse connection from both ends of N spiral to S spiral."

The N spiral is NGC 2992 and the S spiral is NGC 2993. Both were discovered by William Herschel on February 8, 1785 but aren't in either of the Herschel 400 observing programs. While NGC 2992 appears red in my image and is indeed a strong IR source it is also a very strong UV source and well seen in the X-ray spectrum as well. It has a highly variable Seyfert Core. Papers argue between Seyfert 1, 1.9 and 2 status with 1.9 being seen most. All of this is rather expected from such a strongly interacting pair. I don't know if its overall red color is due to stars or dust absorption. I suspect the latter. NED classes it as Sa pec while the NGC project just says Pec. NED gives the northern plume the designation of Arp 245N listing it as a tidal tail.

NGC 2993 is a near face-on spiral with a large bright core, some say is double though I was unable to see this. It is much bluer than its companion. It too has a lot of star birth going on in its core. NED also says it is Sa Pec with HII emissions. The NGC project again says simply Pec. Of the tidal plume between the two galaxies, it is hard to say which galaxy it comes from, possibly both I would suspect. I say this because the plume seems to change from slightly reddish to slightly blue as you get closer to the blue galaxy. The change is rather abrupt in fact. I'd love to see this pair from another angle to see what these tidal plumes are doing. Is the "connecting" plume really connecting or does it go behind or in front of NGC 2992? There is a lot of papers listed at NED, I could take a month to read them all, maybe the answer is in them someplace my quick overview missed. Unfortunately, this pair is barely above 15 degrees south so has rather strong atmospheric extinction. Didn't help this wasn't taken on a good night like Arp 244. Thus the connection between the two is very weak in my image. Another I need to retake but never have.

While this field is not covered by the Sloan survey a couple of unusual objects are among the few NED has data on. One is the very blue star just to the east of the tip of the northern plume of NGC 2992. NED gives it catalog listings. UITBOC 1574 (Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope Bright Object Catalog) saying it is a visual source which tells us nothing useful. Another name for it is [BOB94] 0943-1403 (Bowen+Osmer+Blades catalog of galaxies and quasars) which lists it as a quasar. So far so good. Many quasars are very blue. In fact when they were still a mystery one name for the blue ones was blue stellar object. But then we come to its redshift which says it is only 20 million light-years distant. Normally we'd easily see the galaxy it was in at that distance and the quasar itself should be exceedingly bright not magnitude 17.5. Maybe it is just a super blue star? Redshift error? (I had to go back and correct my typo for "shift" -- I left out the "f" -- maybe I was trying to tell myself something.)

Less confusing is the third galaxy in the group, the thin flat one to the southwest (lower right). It is FGC 938/RFGC 1621. Either indicate it is an extremely flat galaxy (FGC=Flat Galaxy Catalog). Its redshift is also about 125 million light-years so it may be a member of the same group as Arp 245, just not close enough to be interacting. It is classed Scd (as are most entries to these catalogs). How some spirals get to be so flat with virtually no central bulge is still a mystery. Since the size of the bulge seems related to the size of the black hole at a spiral galaxy's core does this mean it has no black hole in its core? Just an unusually small one? I don't know. Anyone out there seen anything on this?

Only 2 other objects, both galaxies, are listed in NED with redshift data. Both can be seen near Arp 245. Directly above the blue star/quasar is a small smudge of a galaxy. It is somewhat blue in color. It is [DBS2000] J094545.55-141623.7 at 1.44 billion light-years. That's the only designation NED has; DBS stands for Duc+Brinks+Springel. The other galaxy is up and to the left of the last one. It is the third (bottom) object of a small arc of two stars and the orange galaxy. The upper star is orange while the middle star is white. The galaxy is quite orange. It is 2MASX J09455121-1415430 with precisely the same redshift (z=0.111000) as the other galaxy and thus also 1.44 billion light-years distant. None of the other galaxies in the image have redshift data and most aren't even listed at NED.

Arp's image:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp245.jpeg

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

Related Designations for ARP245