ASTRO: Arp 128

Arp 128/UGC827 is a pair of galaxies in Pisces, near M74. Arp
considered them interacting, putting them into his class: Elliptical and
elliptical like galaxies close to and perturbing spirals. The
elliptical has a red shift that puts it 496 million light years away
while the barred spiral is listed at a red shift of 563 million light
years. This is a bit large difference for related galaxies but not
impossible. Still I was ready to say no relation until I further
stretched the image and those two linear features just above the spiral
appeared. Fortunately this is in the SDSS survey. Their image shows
the same feature but blurred into one broad feature rather than two
narrow ones. I don't know why the difference. What are they? I found
nothing in the literature about this oddity. It doesn't show in Arp's
photo with the 200". If anyone finds something on them please let me
know. For now I'll have to agree with those saying these two are
interacting due to the odd apparent debris above the western member

There are a few other galaxies in the image about the same red shift as
these two. Since I find little on any of them other than the red shift
I've just prepared an annotated image showing their distance in billions
of light years. As usual G denotes a galaxy while Q a quasar. The
label is immediately right of the object. When this wasn't possible a
line indicates the labeled object. There are three asteroids in the
image as well. (56725) 2000 NY12 at magnitude 19.2, 2009 ST123 at
magnitude 20 and 2002 FL21 at magnitude 20.4. All are rather faint and
difficult to find so they are also shown on the annotated image.

Near the bottom, left of center, is SDSS J011804.83+143158.6. This
galaxy is identified by name on the annotated image. It is 1.6 billion
light years away and very blue in color. This is odd for a galaxy at
that distance which often show a reddish color from interstellar dust
even if really a blue spiral. This would indicate massive star
formation and sure enough it is listed in the ROSAT X ray Source catalog
as RXS J011804.4+143152. Sure wish we were say 1.5 billion light years
closer to get a good look at this one. It is a narrow line Seyfert 1
galaxy. This too indicates it is a very active galaxy with a likely
well fed black hole at its core.

There's an interesting pair of distant galaxies at the bottom of my
image just right of center. The only thing shown at that position is
SDSS J011721.74+143209.6 with a position of the left, fainter and
smaller, galaxy. Nothing is listed for the position of the brighter
one. No red shift data is provided for it/them. I find problems like
this constantly, still with the stated precision of the SDSS their
frequency does surprise me.

My cropped image as well as the Sloan image are reproduced at 0.5" per
pixel while the full image is at its native 1" per pixel (1.012" if you
want to get picky about it).

This is my last September image. On to October which had only one clear
night with only 4 objects, 3 of which are Arps.

Arp's image:
http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level...ig_arp128.jpeg

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

Rick
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Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".