Galaxy Zoo Talk

Is that a merger? =)

  • TrixieArandia by TrixieArandia

    Is that a merger? It looks smooth but it has two bulges =)

    Posted

  • klmasters by klmasters scientist, admin

    Looks more like a knot of star formation in the ring too me - I admit it's awfully big though.

    Posted

  • klmasters by klmasters scientist, admin

    That is one super odd looking galaxy. Here is the 3 colour image - this is the g-band (or bluest) of the filters.

    enter image description here

    Posted

  • klmasters by klmasters scientist, admin

    Actually both bright knots have spectra taken by the Sloan Digital Sky survey, and both have the same distance implied from the redshift of those spectra (z=0.06). They also both look like they are made up primarily of old stars - the bright knot in the ring is definitely not a star formation region then….

    So I think my best guess is a minor merger in the process of disintegrating. Very interesting.

    Links to the spectra:

    Centre of galaxy: http://skyserver.sdss.org/dr12/en/tools/explore/Summary.aspx?id=1237658311866712170

    Bright knot in the ring: http://skyserver.sdss.org/dr12/en/tools/explore/Summary.aspx?id=1237658311866712171

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  • klmasters by klmasters scientist, admin

    Odd enough that this one just got sent to the science team list. Thanks for pointing it out. πŸ˜ƒ

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  • bamford by bamford scientist

    This is nice! Notice that the ring and the knot are slightly bluer, so a bit younger and/or lower-metallicity, than the central galaxy. It looks like a tidal stream being pulled out of a satellite galaxy.

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  • mlpeck by mlpeck

    FWIW this galaxy is in Keel's overlap catalog, so this isn't the first time it has caught the eye of GZ scientists. Author number eight of that paper is K.L. Masters by the way.

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  • Peter_Dzwig by Peter_Dzwig

    Is there a link to the Keel catalogue and/or paper?

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  • JeanTate by JeanTate in response to Peter Dzwig's comment.

    The Overlapping Galaxy Pairs part of the Galaxy Zoo Data webpage has everything: link to the paper, .txt, javascript, and .pdf versions of the catalog, and 1-page-per-object PDFs (they are very cool!)

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  • Capella05 by Capella05 moderator

    Thanks Jean πŸ˜ƒ

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