Continuing Astronomical League programs, I’ve started taking images of Arp’s Peculiar Galaxies, which actually more often than not groups of galaxies acting oddly because of mutual gravitation effects. Here’s number 227 (from Arp’s list of 338; 34-minute monochrome exposure):
The halos around the galaxy at left are real–they are thin streams of stars and dust around the galaxy proper. “Thin” of course being relative to the galaxies’ size, so in this case some tens of thousands of light-years.
Now, the Arp images being taken in this program are Dual Purpose, since the 40-60 minutes of imaging needed to define an Arp galaxy when using NEKAAL’s 27″ reflector matches the typical time needed to detect a minor planet and to get a first measurement of its motion. Last month bagged 9 new minor planet designations for Farpoint.