ASTRO: Arp 106 Collision alert

Arp 106 is an interacting pair of galaxies in Coma Berenices about 315
million light years away. Arp put it in his category of elliptical and
elliptical-like galaxies connected to spirals. He made no comment on
this entry.

The two galaxies are known as NGC 4211. While some catalogs give only
one number to both a few do have separate numbers. MGC +5-29-042 is the
northern member and MGC +5-29-043 is the southern to give one example.
NED classes both as S0/a pec. I would say the southern one is likely S0
but the upper appears to be a distorted Sa or possibly Sb spiral to me.
In any case both have been severely disrupted by their interaction.
They have somewhat different red shifts. I don't know if that will be
enough to prevent them from merging in the future or not. I rather
suspect they will merge eventually becoming an elliptical galaxy. Note
that there appears to be a faint plume east of the southern well defined
plume. I see hints of it in the Sloan image as well.

Just west of the pair is LEDA 1828543 (SDSS J121521.05+281048.0), a
spiral galaxy that is likely a member of the same group as Arp 106 as
its redshift is practically the same.

Toward the southwest (lower right) corner is an object that NED shows as
being a quasar in some catalogs, an IR source only in the 2MASX catalog,
a star in the Sloan survey and a galaxy at a slightly different position
(0.1" different in declination). NED shows two red shifts, one is
z=0.692000, the other is z = 4.88922! Now that's a discrepancy. The
distance I used on the annotated image is based on the lower z value
which puts it 6.3 billion light years away. The other value would put
it over 12.4 billion light years which would mean it is brighter than
any quasar I ever heard of. The lower value is even surprising
considering its magnitude of 17.8.

An interesting galaxy at 670 million light years is SDSS
J121522.43+280406.9 south southwest of Arp 106. It seems to have one
heavy arm on the south. It would fit in either Arp's one arm category
or heavy arm category.

Arp's image
http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level...ig_arp106.jpeg

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10 RBG=2x10x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

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

Rats, I grabbed the wrong annotated image. It has an error in it. This
is the correct one. I should have deleted the old one but got lazy.

Rick


On 3/19/2011 12:39 PM, Rick Johnson wrote:
Arp 106 is an interacting pair of galaxies in Coma Berenices about 315
million light years away. Arp put it in his category of elliptical and
elliptical-like galaxies connected to spirals. He made no comment on
this entry.

The two galaxies are known as NGC 4211. While some catalogs give only
one number to both a few do have separate numbers. MGC +5-29-042 is the
northern member and MGC +5-29-043 is the southern to give one example.
NED classes both as S0/a pec. I would say the southern one is likely S0
but the upper appears to be a distorted Sa or possibly Sb spiral to me.
In any case both have been severely disrupted by their interaction. They
have somewhat different red shifts. I don't know if that will be enough
to prevent them from merging in the future or not. I rather suspect they
will merge eventually becoming an elliptical galaxy. Note that there
appears to be a faint plume east of the southern well defined plume. I
see hints of it in the Sloan image as well.

Just west of the pair is LEDA 1828543 (SDSS J121521.05+281048.0), a
spiral galaxy that is likely a member of the same group as Arp 106 as
its redshift is practically the same.

Toward the southwest (lower right) corner is an object that NED shows as
being a quasar in some catalogs, an IR source only in the 2MASX catalog,
a star in the Sloan survey and a galaxy at a slightly different position
(0.1" different in declination). NED shows two red shifts, one is
z=0.692000, the other is z = 4.88922! Now that's a discrepancy. The
distance I used on the annotated image is based on the lower z value
which puts it 6.3 billion light years away. The other value would put it
over 12.4 billion light years which would mean it is brighter than any
quasar I ever heard of. The lower value is even surprising considering
its magnitude of 17.8.

An interesting galaxy at 670 million light years is SDSS
J121522.43+280406.9 south southwest of Arp 106. It seems to have one
heavy arm on the south. It would fit in either Arp's one arm category or
heavy arm category.

Arp's image
http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level...ig_arp106.jpeg

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10 RBG=2x10x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick


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