Taffy Galaxies and the Saturn Nebula

[Mike JW]

Hi folks,

Last night, 23rd August was a cracker - so steady such that despite Saturn being so low in GB skies there was no problem seeing the Cassini Gap, ring shadow on Saturn, 4 moons and banding on Saturn with my C11. A memorable sight. Anyway I digress. Wandered over to the Saturn Nebula and had a nice visual view so for a joke I thought I would put the camera in and did  a 0.5 sec shot - rather amazed at the result.

 

On a more serious mission I did various Arps in Pegasus but what caught my eye was the pair of interacting galaxies called Taffy Galaxies. I don't think I had ever seen them visually with a big Dob but with the camera - a fascinating sight.  They are a pair of galaxies which smashed into each other in a face on collision, resulting in the customary cosmic mess with major star formation being triggered. The hydrogen gas has been stripped from them and forms a bridge between them. The collision is thought to have happened about 20 million years (that is almost like yesterday in cosmic time).

 

Mike

[Bill S]

Interesting objects. Thanks for drawing attention to it/them. Had a bit of go myself and managed to see them with my 200 mm Newt, Lodestar, Starlight LIve and Jocular set-up. There seems to have been a lot of professional studies. An alternative designation for them is VV254 and this is what is used in Jocular's DSO database.

I did have to look up why they are call 'taffy'. All to do with their appearance and resemblance to taffy candy/sweets (US term).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taffy_(candy)