ASTRO: Arp 132

Arp 132 falls in Arp's category Elliptical close to and perturbing
spirals. It is about 350 to 360 million light-years away in the
constellation of Leo just north of Crater. It appears the western
galaxy is the spiral and the eastern the elliptical that Arp refers to.
Oddly NED classes both as E pec one place and the obvious spiral as Sb
pec in another. It appears the E pec classification is a misprint. The
red shifts of these two aren't quite the same indicating an 8 million
light year difference. This doesn't mean they are really this far apart
or didn't interact in the past. Still I have problems with them as a
real interacting pair. The elliptical, while labeled peculiar, probably
for the strong core and much weaker outer areas (is this a disk seen
face on or a sphere of low stellar density) it is quite even. I'd
suspect any recent interaction to have distorted it in an unsymmetrical
way. There are a few other galaxies at about the same distance in the
image including the far larger CGCG 011-062 to the far left of my image.
None of them appear likely candidates either for interaction with the
western member of Arp 132. Is an interaction even necessary as these
are quite small galaxies some of which just seem naturally distorted?
Another possibility I didn't find anyone considering is that the
southern part of the spiral is really a separate galaxy with a tidal
tail looking like a spiral arm so this is a merger in progress. I found
virtually nothing of use for deciding this in the literature.

There is a galaxy group centered near the upper left corner of my image
that has an average distance of 360 million light-years with 22 members.
No diameter is given. It's possible Arp 132 is a member of this group
as are most of the other galaxies at about this distance in the image.
It's core is marked by its name, MZ 04712.

This field is out of the Sloan survey field yet there's a lot of
information on the other galaxies in the image so the annotated image is
rather well covered with red shift distances for a change.

Arp 132 is in the same field as the LCLG -03 080 galaxy group which
consists of 9 members at about 1.5 billion light-years. Those I could
identify as part of the 9 members are noted by G L followed by their red
shift distance. LCLG stands for Las Campanas Loose Groups in case you
were wondering. The center of the group is marked by its name. Oddly
there are quite a few other galaxies at about 1.5 billion light years
that are not in the group. Some of these, but not all are in the Las
Campanas Red Shift catalog. So why aren't they in the group? I have no
idea but if I include them as part of the group the count goes well over
9. My head hurts.

The image contains two asteroids; (14313) Dodaira at an estimated
magnitude of 18.2 and (107981) 2001 FY130 at an estimated magnitude of
19.5. The naming citation of Dodaira reads:
Dodaira station was dedicated in 1962 with a 0.91-m reflector and 0.50-m
Schmidt telescope as a branch station of the Tokyo Astronomical
Observatory in Saitama prefecture, and its operation was terminated in
Mar. 2000. It was located where the borders of Tokigawa, Ogawamachi and
Higashichichibu meet.

So what happened to those nice telescopes? If they are no longer using
them I'd be willing to take the 0.91 meter scope of their hands.

Arp's image
http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level...ig_arp132.jpeg

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10'x3, 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".