KPG 542 A pair of possibly interacting galaxies

KPG 542, also known as UGC 11453 is a pair of interacting galaxies in the northwest corner of Cygnus about 165 million light-years distant by redshift. Not a place you'd normally go galaxy hunting. Pros don't either unfortunately. I was unable to turn up much about this pair. The spiral has obviously been distorted with the plume along the north side and drawn out eastern arm. There's some disagreement whether it is an ATM or DIS pair. Without getting into details ATM pairs are in a common halo and DIS show interaction. Of course some are both but I don't see a common halo so vote for DIS with only the spiral showing any interaction. It is classified by NED as Sb with the companion E.

Since there are no other galaxies with redshift data in the field and very few faint ones I didn't prepare an annotated image. In fact the only other galaxy listed at NED is toward the upper left corner. NED lists it as the IR source 2MASX J19321568+5411555. It also is listed as an Uv source, GALEXASC J193215.45+541157.3.

This one could have certainly fit Arp's category for spirals with a high surface brightness companion on an arm. Seems better suited then many he included in this category that were only line of sight pairs separated by many millions of light-years.

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

Rick

Rick,

that looks like M51 with the companion in the wrong place :-)
Went on my list in case I want to image galaxies in summer.