Coud this be a bulgeless AGN?

i can't quite figure this one out: bulgeless AGN? Ring? Both? What's going on here?

Posted January 17, 2014 2:25 PM

by JeanTate in response to paola's comment.

Wow! 😮

I think it's got an AGN, and a rather bright one at that.

The galaxy is NGC 4296, member of a well-known galaxy pair, and its optical morphology is classed as S0, which means it's a lenticular, a disk galaxy without arms. My quick review of the literature did not turn up anything on it having an AGN (it doesn't have an SDSS spectrum 😦), which seems odd.

Here it is in SDSS:

enter image description here

Posted January 17, 2014 4:41 PM

by Vorvadoss

This object is puzzling me as well, with that brilliant point in the center are we looking "down the barrel" of of a AGN? From the post above it looks like it is not classified as having a AGN but I can think of no other reason for the brilliant point dead center that way. Thoughts? Further info?

Posted January 18, 2014 8:42 PM