Spiral galaxy NGC 2276

his is a combination of several exposures taken on the night of October 11th 1994 (UT of observation 12/10/94:10:43 to 11:00) with the 1k detector. Images were taken through three different filters approximating red (three exposures for a total of six minutes), blue (two, total 140 seconds) and green (two, total three minutes). The individual colors were aligned and combined in the computer to create this (approximately) true color picture. This photograph shows a region 200 arc seconds square. The two different images simply represent different conversions to color: one may look better than the other on your viewer. Unfortunately, this image has a "seeing" measurement (average FWHM of several stars) of over 1.4 arc seconds. About this object NGC2276 (Arp 25) is an unusual nearby spiral galaxy of type Sc, possibly transitioning to a central bar. NGC2276 is actually paired with the elliptical galaxy NGC2300 (not shown here). Although there is no evidence of strong interaction, the proximity of NGC2300 may account for the asymmetric appearance of NGC2276. Elliptical-spiral pairs are rare in the Universe, as most theories of galaxy formation predict that environment determines type, so that two galaxies forming close together, and presumably in very similar environments, should have similar types. NGC2276 is somewhat over 100 million light-years away in the direction of the (rather extended) constellation Camelopardalis. Location: 07 10.5 +85 51 (1950.0)