UGC 5904 A pair of interacting galaxies Arp missed

Somehow this post vanished from SpaceBanter so I'm reposting it.

UGC 05904 is a pair of likely interacting galaxies in Ursa Major about 300 million light-years distant. The southern member, UGC 5904a, a Sb galaxy with a narrow line active galaxy nucleus is also known as 2MFGC 08412 so makes the less demanding 2 micron flat galaxy catalog but isn't flat enough for the FGC itself. It's companion, UGC 05904b is listed as an elliptical galaxy. It seems to have a well defined core with a rather blue disk and apparent dust lanes that seem to define a vague spiral pattern. While it's redshift would seem to put it more distant than UGC 05904a by some 3 million light-years this is likely just due to their relative velocities rather than being a real distance difference. Which galaxy is in front? If it is the edge on spiral it could be the dust lanes in the elliptical are due to the dust lane in the spiral seen against the more distant elliptical. Still it looks to me that the elliptical is in front. Spectral data should answer this question but I found none in the literature. The disk of the spiral is warped with the north west end bending up and the southeast end warped down. Though much of this downward warp is due to a plume like blob of stars with the actual disk extending pretty much on plane beyond it. But even that does warp down some. The northwest end can be seen beyond the elliptical and appears rather like a blob rather than a well defined end of the edge on disk you'd expect to see.

Beside the normal objects in my annotated image this one has one listed as a candidate for a broad lined AGN and an entry from the SHOC catalog which lists galaxies from the Sloan survey with HII emission and an abundance of Oxygen. The letters stand for Sloan HII galaxies with Oxygen Abundances Catalog. Now that's a mouthful. The galaxy is a blue compact galaxy as well. There are two other NLAGN galaxies in the image besides UGC 05904a. Besides the 3 distant quasars and one quasar candidate (UvES) in the image there were even more just outside my field of view. No asteroids however. Declination is too high for most known asteroids.

Again seeing and transparency was well below normal. This robbed me of a couple magnitudes. The one galaxy cluster would normally have stood out quite well in normal conditions, rather than being a barely resolved blob you see here.

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

Rick

Rick,

this looks like a miniature edge-on version of M51 ;-)

Stefan


"WA0CKY" schrieb im Newsbeitrag ...


Somehow this post vanished from SpaceBanter so I'm reposting it.

UGC 05904 is a pair of likely interacting galaxies in Ursa Major about
300 million light-years distant. The southern member, UGC 5904a, a Sb
galaxy with a narrow line active galaxy nucleus is also known as 2MFGC
08412 so makes the less demanding 2 micron flat galaxy catalog but isn't
flat enough for the FGC itself. It's companion, UGC 05904b is listed as
an elliptical galaxy. It seems to have a well defined core with a
rather blue disk and apparent dust lanes that seem to define a vague
spiral pattern. While it's redshift would seem to put it more distant
than UGC 05904a by some 3 million light-years this is likely just due to
their relative velocities rather than being a real distance difference.
Which galaxy is in front? If it is the edge on spiral it could be the
dust lanes in the elliptical are due to the dust lane in the spiral seen
against the more distant elliptical. Still it looks to me that the
elliptical is in front. Spectral data should answer this question but I
found none in the literature. The disk of the spiral is warped with the
north west end bending up and the southeast end warped down. Though
much of this downward warp is due to a plume like blob of stars with the
actual disk extending pretty much on plane beyond it. But even that
does warp down some. The northwest end can be seen beyond the
elliptical and appears rather like a blob rather than a well defined end
of the edge on disk you'd expect to see.

Beside the normal objects in my annotated image this one has one listed
as a candidate for a broad lined AGN and an entry from the SHOC catalog
which lists galaxies from the Sloan survey with HII emission and an
abundance of Oxygen. The letters stand for Sloan HII galaxies with
Oxygen Abundances Catalog. Now that's a mouthful. The galaxy is a blue
compact galaxy as well. There are two other NLAGN galaxies in the image
besides UGC 05904a. Besides the 3 distant quasars and one quasar
candidate (UvES) in the image there were even more just outside my field
of view. No asteroids however. Declination is too high for most known
asteroids.

Again seeing and transparency was well below normal. This robbed me of
a couple magnitudes. The one galaxy cluster would normally have stood
out quite well in normal conditions, rather than being a barely resolved
blob you see here.

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

Rick


--
WA0CKY