Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Eridanus (Eri)  ·  Contains:  NGC 1232
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NGC1232: What a spiral!, Charles Bracken
NGC1232: What a spiral!
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Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
NGC1232: What a spiral!, Charles Bracken
NGC1232: What a spiral!
Powered byPixInsight

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Description

NGC1232’s spiral is so tight, it almost looks like it’s spinning. Unlike most spirals, where the arms quickly merge into the core, these remain visibly separate almost all the way to the small barred core. The small companion galaxy is known informally as NGC1232A (formally as PGC11834 or ESO547-016), and the pair is known as Arp 41.The scientific literature is inconclusive on whether NGC1232A is a chance alignment of a much more distant galaxy or a close companion to NGC1232. Redshift data indicate that they are at substantially different distances, so the most likely scenarios seems to be that they are a chance alignment.

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NGC1232: What a spiral!, Charles Bracken