Q about galaxy "near" Tadpole galaxy

There's a very nice before- and after-enhancement pair of pictures at
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/t...b2006_1207.htm of the
"Tadpole Galaxy" (UGC 10214). The second largest galaxy in the pic, in
the lower left-hand corner, has an odd "streamer" that appears to be
coming out of it. (You have to look at the high resolution pics via
the links just below the small pics shown at that web page--it's not
apparent at low-res.) The streamer _appears_ to be oriented at right
angles to the disk of the "smaller" (and presumably further) galaxy,
and coming from the central bulge--just like one would imagine if there
were a polar jet like one sees in portrayals of rotating black holes.
But I've never seen such a jet in other galaxies.

Is this an optical illusion? Perhaps a nearby nebula that just happens
to be in the right place to make it look like a jet?

(There's also a smudge coming off the Tadpole Galaxy pointing nearly
straight "down", apparent even in the low-res pic on the original web
page. But it's not as strikingly oriented, and maybe it's like the
"tail" of the Tadpole.)

wrote:
There's a very nice before- and after-enhancement pair of pictures at
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/t...b2006_1207.htm of the
"Tadpole Galaxy" (UGC 10214). The second largest galaxy in the pic, in
the lower left-hand corner, has an odd "streamer" that appears to be
coming out of it. (You have to look at the high resolution pics via
the links just below the small pics shown at that web page--it's not
apparent at low-res.) The streamer _appears_ to be oriented at right
angles to the disk of the "smaller" (and presumably further) galaxy,
and coming from the central bulge--just like one would imagine if there
were a polar jet like one sees in portrayals of rotating black holes.
But I've never seen such a jet in other galaxies.

Is this an optical illusion? Perhaps a nearby nebula that just happens
to be in the right place to make it look like a jet?

(There's also a smudge coming off the Tadpole Galaxy pointing nearly
straight "down", apparent even in the low-res pic on the original web
page. But it's not as strikingly oriented, and maybe it's like the
"tail" of the Tadpole.)


It almost looks like the two smudges coming off the tadpole galaxy and
small background galaxy look like they're connected to each other like a
loose rope.

Yousuf Khan

wrote in message
oups.com...
There's a very nice before- and after-enhancement pair of pictures at
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/t...b2006_1207.htm of the
"Tadpole Galaxy" (UGC 10214). The second largest galaxy in the pic, in
the lower left-hand corner, has an odd "streamer" that appears to be
coming out of it. (You have to look at the high resolution pics via
the links just below the small pics shown at that web page--it's not
apparent at low-res.) The streamer _appears_ to be oriented at right
angles to the disk of the "smaller" (and presumably further) galaxy,
and coming from the central bulge--just like one would imagine if there
were a polar jet like one sees in portrayals of rotating black holes.
But I've never seen such a jet in other galaxies.

Is this an optical illusion? Perhaps a nearby nebula that just happens
to be in the right place to make it look like a jet?

If I have found what you are describing, there is a bright
object at the lower left end of the stream. If that is
associated with the galaxy then it is too bright to be a
single star so perhaps a (very bright) globular cluster
or smaller satellite galaxy? In that case it might have
passed through the main disk and produced a trailing
tidal stream. On the other hand, it might be an optical
effect from a local star where the CCD creates an artefact
if there is some non-linearity in the response to the
combined flux along those pixels, but that's a caveat, I
would not have expected that sort of problem.

George

In article .com,
writes:
There's a very nice before- and after-enhancement pair of pictures at
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/t...b2006_1207.htm of the
"Tadpole Galaxy" (UGC 10214). The second largest galaxy in the pic, in
the lower left-hand corner, has an odd "streamer" that appears to be
coming out of it.

Let's call that second largest galaxy "B." If you look at the
less-processed picture at
http://patapsco.nist.gov/ImageGaller...fileformat=jpg
you can see some fuzzy structure to the upper right of B. There's a
bright spot that George mentions to the lower left of B. If we
imaging taking B out of the picture, what the rest looks like to me
is a tidally-interacting galaxy with extended arms, the bright spot
being the nucleus and one arm passing across B. Confirming or
refuting this interpretation would take some detailed modelling and
perhaps better observations (which are not going to be easy to get).

(There's also a smudge coming off the Tadpole Galaxy pointing nearly
straight "down", apparent even in the low-res pic on the original web
page.

That looks like a tidal arm to me. There's also a fuzzy spot just to
the left of this arm. It could be a star cluster, a galaxy within
the interacting system, or a background (or foreground) galaxy. I
don't know whether anyone has produced a dynamical model of the
Tadpole or not; that's what would be needed to sort out all the
components. I'm no expert on dynamical models, but I understand
building one for a particular system is hard work, and there's no
guarantee that a successful model is unique.

--
Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
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