This Arp object, located on the right edge of this image, is a pair of interacting galaxies located 320 million light years away in the constellation of Andromeda at a declination of +24 degrees.
The framing of this image is a bit unusual. A bright 6th magnitude star is located just below and to the right of this object, so I moved that distracting bright star just off of the image. Also, south is up for this image. I usually orient my images so that north is up, but I make an exception (as in this case) to put the near side of an edge-on spiral galaxy towards the bottom of the image. That orientation is simply easier for my simple mind to interpret.
The main galaxy here is NGC 169, a near edge-on
Seyfert galaxy. This galaxy is huge – the main bright portion of the galaxy is 140,000 light years in diameter. The outer edges of the galaxy, seen in the extended star streams, span twice that distance. The companion is IC 1559, a polar ring galaxy 40,000 light years in diameter.
Many times I find Dr. Arp’s classification and notes somewhat puzzling, but it this case they are spot on. He classified this object into the category of Double Galaxies – Infall and Attraction. His notes say, “Companion appears to rain into nucleus of spiral.” That is a great way to describe this object. It looks to me like the companion is being sucked into and swallowed up by the vortex of the main galaxy below. As a result of the interaction, the core of the main galaxy is shifted left, its bulge of halo stars is brighter above the core, its dust lane has been distorted, and numerous star streams are seen to the right of the main disk. I love the contrasting colors of the 2 galaxies of this object.
I am shocked at how similar this object is to NGC 1532. I have included a comparison image in Revision C. Arp 282 is 5x further away from us than NGC 1532, so the detail is not as good with it.
The other interesting object in this image is NGC 160, to the left. This galaxy is closer at 270 million light years and is large, at a diameter of 150,000 light years. I like seeing the hint of a faint hexagonal shape to the inner ring, which is due to the
Vorontsov-Velyaminov rows in the arms.
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