PGC 16636 is a severely warped edge on spiral in western Orion just
north of Eridanus about 190 to 200 million light-years distant. NED
classifies it as Sb pec sp. It certainly is peculiar. The eastern
(left) side of the disk is seen virtually edge on so appears as a thin
light though the disk is unusually fuzzy. Usually when seen edge on the
disk is sharply defined while this one sort of fades away but the main
part is obviously very thin. The western (right) side however is tilted
rather strongly so we see one face of the disk. Which way it is twisted
(do we see the top or bottom side) I can't say. The dust lane takes a
sudden jog as it leaves the bright region and heads onto the disk. It
may be that rather than being twisted the west side is just a lot
fuzzier without a defined plane. I rather doubt that but it would help
explain why the dust lane continues across an apparently warped disk. I
found not a single paper on this galaxy so have no idea what is going on
here.

I'm still working an area poorly cataloged for galaxies. Only two
others have redshift data. Both are seen in the cropped image. 6dF
J0503238-025745 is 1.22 billion light-years distant. NED doesn't
classify it. It is the apparent face on disk galaxy below the eastern
end of PGC 16636. A small galaxy is just east of it (2MASX
J05032490-0257494). While most of the other galaxies in the image
aren't listed at NED that one was. The other galaxy with redshift data
is LEDA 3080778 at the very bottom of the cropped image. NED puts it at
1.20 billion light-years. It may be related to the other distant one.
I find no other information worth mentioning on the rest of the field.

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

Rick
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