Saturday, April 2, 2022

A Whale and a Hockey Stick. First Published 02.22.2022

 Another close pair of galaxies is the Whale (NGC 4631) and Hockey Stick (NGC 4656) galaxies. The Whale is a starburst galaxy--a barred spiral viewed edge on. It is slightly distorted due to gravitational interactions with NGC 4656 and NGC 4657. The Whale also interacts with its dwarf elliptical galaxy companion, NGC 4627. The Hockey Stick owes its unusual shape to gravitational distortions from this group. Below is a wide field image of the galaxies, followed by an annotated image showing the galaxies in the group.




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