NGC 6701 - Barred spiral galaxy

[mdstuart]

I tried to locate a host of faint galaxies but it was pretty hazy so perhaps it was the seeing that was causing the problem.

Anyway finally I found one that I could see. Its in Draco and is a small mag 12 object.

Basically all I could see was an enlongated glowing patch to the right of a field star!

Turns out it is quite interesting due to its rotation..

...The images show a very prominent diamond-shaped bar lying almost along the disc minor axis. The bar is especially bright along the most external regions of its major axis. The signature of star forming processes can be seen in those regions by their bluer colors and also from the Hα image. Two distinct dust lanes trace the inner sides of these bright features. The spectroscopic results point to the presence of shocks along the dust lanes, in agreement with some numerical simulations of barred galaxies. In fact, the properties of NGC 6701 resemble those found in simulations quite well. The kinematical analysis of NGC 6701 shows a perturbed rotation curve. This galaxy shows many of the signs supposed to be consequences of interaction. We report the redshift of a nearby, small galaxy, which turns out to be a physical companion to NGC 6701. The redshift difference is only 145 km/s and the projected distance is 73kpc (with H_0_=75km/s/Mpc). The peculiarities in NGC 6701 could thus be produced by the interaction with this small companion.

I cannot comment on the above but at least I could see it!

Mark