ASTRO NGC 4710 and IC 3806

NGC 4710 is located about 60-66 million light-years from us in Coma
Berenices. It is classed S0-a by the NGC project and SA(r)0+? by NED.
The (r) refers to the ring it appears to contain. It is seen edge on,
same as NGC 4762 (also an S0) in my previous post. Both have a ring
like region around the core and an extended much fainter disk. The main
difference between them is that NGC 4762 is missing the expected dust
lane while NGC 4710 has a enough dust for several such galaxies but it
is confined to the the bright box-like core region which is highly
unusual. This galaxy has been studied by the Hubble Space telescope.
They have a good explanation of what's going on at this link:
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic0914/

While the box like core region with the "X" shaped bright regions is
hard to see in the HST image it is rather obvious in mine. The tips of
the "X" show as bumps above and below the normal rectangular core
region. While not mentioned at the HST site I've seen other sources
blame this on interaction with other galaxies. The Hamburger Galaxy NGC
3628 which is obviously interacting with its companion is a good example.

The other main galaxy in the image is IC 3806. Redshift puts it a bit
further away at 79 million light-years. As redshift is greatly affected
by random motion at this distance, its quite likely they are really both
at about the same distance. IC 3806 is classed Sa? at NED. It has no
obvious core but does have several bright regions near the core region.
This would indicate a rather recent burst of star formation. Could
that have occurred because of interaction with NGC 4710? No paper even
hints at this as possible so apparently unlikely. Still I can't help
but wonder as both are irregular in some way. I'm not talking anything
major here just they got close enough in the past to trigger the needed
star formation in both to create their odd core regions.

The odd dust structure of NGC 4710 however makes me wonder if it isn't
due to it "digesting" a small, very dusty galaxy ala the Black Eye
Galaxy. I sure wish we knew what it looked like face on.

One quasar is seen near the southwest end of NGC 4710. Otherwise I was
able to find little of interest in my image. One minor galaxy cluster
WHL J124952.9+145548 with 13 members and at an estimated distance of 4.6
billion light-years light travel time is located near the bottom of the
image a bit left of center. It's position is 1 second of arc different
than the galaxy I've marked it by in the annotated image. No distance
is given for the galaxy however so that is represented as a question mark.

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

Rick
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