ARP117 (IC983) and ARP79 (NGC5490C)

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.© astropix.nl

IC 983 (AKA Arp 117, IRAS 14077 + 1757, MCG 3-36-68, PGC 50577 en UGC 9061) is a large face on spiral that is listed in "Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies" as number 117. It is estimated to be at a distance of 250 million light year, and I found several estimates of its diameter ranging from 300,000 to 400,000 light years, so it is really huge! This galaxy was discovered on May 27, 1891 by Stepane Javelle.

In the image, IC 983 is the large spiral on the left. But there is another Arp galaxy in the field, the strikingly blue small spiral just right and below center of the image. This is Arp 79 (NGC 5490C) a spiral with a high surface-brightness companion projected on one of its arms.

This image is a composition of 50 LRGB filtered integrations of 600s each. The telescope is in my remote observatory that is located in rural Germany and the images were acquired automagically by the APC Expert scheduler software during several nights in May 2018.

The full image can be seen here: https://www.astrobin.com/full/345374/D/

In that image, on the left, a bright reflection of Arcturus is visible, a very bright star located about two degrees away from the imaged field.