UGC 892

UGC 892UGC 892 and its companion 2MASXI J0121174-003312 were first listed as Arp 67 in Dr. Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies published by Caltech in 1966.  Unbelievably, the best image I can find today is still the same photograph used by Dr. Arp that was taken by the Palomar Observatory’s  famous 200-inch Hale telescope back in 1966, as shown on the left.   I cropped the original image a little to fit it on the page but otherwise it is unaltered.  The reason I use the term “unbelievably” is that once again I find that decades have passed and I’m expected to believe that no large modern telescope has bothered to make another observation of what is potentially yet another example of discordant redshifts between two possibly connected objects.

This somewhat grainy image shows what appears to be a small companion object just southwest of the primary galaxy UGC 892.  The smaller object, 2MASXI J0121174-003312, appears to be disrupting  the darker of the two main arms of the larger galaxy making it seem to appear connected to the larger galaxy.  Of course the problem with this is that the objects’ redshifts indicate that they are supposedly at great distances from each other and therefore the smaller object could not possibly be affecting the larger one.    UGC 892’s redshift of 0.0175 z as listed on NED places it at a supposed distance of approximately 310 million light years from Earth using a so-called Hubble Constant value of 55 (km/s)/Mpc.   The redshift of 2MASXI J0121174-003312 is listed on NED as 0.055 z which places it at supposedly three times the distance at approximately 967 million light years from Earth also using a so-called Hubble Constant value of 55 (km/s)/Mpc.

UGC 892 JHK waveband compositeOne would think that such a discrepancy would garner a closer look by one of the several larger telescopes that have been built since the Hale in the past sixty years.  Yet the only other observations I could find of Arp 67 were even lower resolution images produced by one-meter range telescopes such as the UK Schmidt and the retired 50-inch telescope at Kitt Peak including a set of infrared images produced by the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) over a decade ago and listed under the name 2MASX J01211663-0032402.  A composite of the three infrared waveband images taken by 2MASS is show on the right.

Even in this fuzzy image and in the others mentioned  a tenuous connection between the parent and companion objects is visible.  Hopefully one day more higher resolution images of these objects will be made available from the powerful telescopes at our disposal and a literally more clearer picture of the situation will emerge even if it does conflict with current cosmological theories.  As usual I will continue to pursue new data and report any new findings as they are published.  And as always, I encourage all visitors to this site to pursue their own observations and feel free to contribute to those posted here or even submit new ones.

Thanks for reading!

Shannon

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4 Responses to “UGC 892”

  1. Jean Tate says:

    SDSS imaged this part of the sky, and in DR7 there are spectra for both objects (including the re-reduction done in DR8).

    UGC 892 is SDSS J012116.60-003240.1 (DR7 ObjId 587731512069586982), and 2MASXI J0121174-003312 is SDSS J012117.43-003311.8 (DR7 ObjId 587731512069586984).

    • sbsims says:

      I am pleasantly surprised to see this observation, thank you so much for sharing! When I diligently searched two years ago I could not find, to my obvious frustration, anything other than the two images I posted. It just goes to show that it is always good to have other eyes on the subject. I think this image clarifies that there has indeed been some interaction between the two objects, don’t you agree?

  2. Jean Tate says:

    UGC 892 was posted in the Galaxy Zoo forum (http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/index.php), under UGC 00892, on March 04, 2010, in the UGC Catalog thread (http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/index.php?topic=275993.0):
    http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/index.php?topic=275993.msg438418#msg438418

    zooite elizabeth notes that it has been posted before, in the forum. One such mention is by NGC3314 (who is, IRL, the astronomer Bill Keel), on November 18, 2008: “Next up: 587731512069586982, more succinctly (if not better) known as UGC 892. This has a bar and arms wrapping into a pseudoring, and we can look for dust lanes crossing one of the galaxies in the deep background. The last-quarter moon just rose as we finished the previous galaxy pair, so we’re having to leave a wide berth for some excellent target galaxies in that part of the sky (waiting for the next couple of nights as it moves out of the way). Here’s the SDSS chart for UGC 892”.

    Here is the URL for that Galaxy Zoo forum post:
    http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/index.php?topic=9102.msg224560#msg224560

    • sbsims says:

      If I’ve ever run across this post it would had to have been before I ever launched this website or I might have made it one of my first examples. Thanks again for the second pair of eyes!

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