Diagonal dustlane

• by williamaskew

  Anyone?

  Posted October 30, 2012 11:51 PM

• by delete_adc0630b

  Start of a #barred spiral galaxy?

  Posted October 30, 2012 11:58 PM

• by elizabeth_s

  how about NGC 0407

  Posted October 31, 2012 9:04 AM

• by klmasters scientist, admin

  I have no idea how that works. Bill Keel might - I'll point him to it, and see what he thinks. Looks really unusual to me.

  Posted September 6, 2013 3:46 PM

• by vrooje admin, scientist

  Huh. That's cool.

  Posted September 6, 2013 3:47 PM

• by KWillett scientist, admin, translator

  Results of a recent merger, maybe? I agree that's really interesting - would love to put that down for deeper observations.

  Posted September 6, 2013 4:08 PM

• by KWillett scientist, admin, translator

  It's also an NGC galaxy (NGC 407), which you can find by clicking on the "Search NED" button in Galaxy Zoo Examine. I briefly looked at the list of published papers for this object (http://goo.gl/47k6AC), but none of them seem to have looked at this object in detail; they're all general catalog papers with thousands of objects, for the most part.

  Posted September 6, 2013 4:13 PM

• by NGC3314 scientist

  Hmm. Both the stellar disk ad the dust lane are warped, but the dust warp is much more pronounced. Both warps likely result from a strong interaction, but it's not immediately obvious whether the two can have the same 3-dimensional structure. The ambiguity happens because we see the summed starlight al the way through the disk front-to-back, but the dust only where there is sufficient backlight in front. Imagining a shape like a very twisted potato chip for the disk, the dust might just possibly lie in the middle of the starlight disk, but again I'd want further data!

  Looking at the wider environment, there are additional galaxies in the NGC 410 group, so an encounter (not necessarily merging) is plausible. The elliptical NGC 410 at z=0.0177 is projected about 120 kpc away and is luminous enough to be massive. Still, I'm not sure i can recall seeing another galaxy with a dust lane that is both so large and so misaligned accompanied by a stellar disk with such a weak warp. (Adds note to potential observing list)

  Posted September 6, 2013 4:24 PM

• by klmasters scientist, admin

  Mike Williams from the science team thinks it looks a bit like NGC 4710 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_4710) which is a more famous example of a diagonal dust lane. I think this one looks more extreme though.

  SDSS image of NGC 4710 (it's closer, but the dust lane looks smaller, and less diagonal to me).

  Posted September 7, 2013 11:37 AM

• by klmasters scientist, admin

  Looking on NED like Kyle - there's a lot of data for this galaxy. Should be a GALEX image. It's actually even one of the galaxies in the sample my PhD thesis work used, so there's either a rotation curve or a neutral hydrogen observation (with dynamics).

  Posted September 7, 2013 11:40 AM

• by Avirex

  In my opinion the diagonal dustlane is created by a small galaxy which has merged in or near the center of the big galaxy. The angle of the dustlane might be the direction of the former galaxy. A big difference in mass can be the cause that the big galaxy is not much disturbed after the merging.

  Noticing the two white dots on either sides of the galaxy, it seems to be a typical gravitational lens. Or the lens must be on the left, between the two white and red dots.

  Posted September 30, 2013 9:13 PM

• by ElisabethB moderator

  The white and red dots are all foreground stars from our galaxy. No lensing here, sorry.

  Posted September 30, 2013 9:18 PM

• by KWillett scientist, admin, translator

  Yep - you can double check any potential lens candidates against the identifications from SDSS. Looking at the Navigator tool - http://skyserver.sdss3.org/dr8/en/tools/chart/navi.asp - is the way I do this. Clicking on both white dots that @Avirex mentioned, the catalog says that TYPE=STAR; this means it has a light profile consistent with an object that's too small for the SDSS telescope to measure it's diameter. These objects are usually either stars or quasars, and the colors of these objects are more consistent with stars.

  Posted October 11, 2013 4:22 PM

• by Notes

  I have a galaxy here - UGC12081 - which has a dustlane parallel but out of alignment if that makes sense, like a bike tyre that has come off the rim:
  http://www.galaxyzoo.org/#/examine/AGZ000569z

  Posted October 19, 2013 11:31 PM

• by finite_infinity

  What about this one? Maybe with diagonal dustlane?

  http://talk.galaxyzoo.org/#/subjects/AGZ0001zta

  Posted November 17, 2013 2:13 PM