background hourglass or jet of one of a pair of interacting galaxies?

• by WizardHowl

  I marked this as all the radio emission arising from the centre of the large IR mass, which seems like it might be two (or more) interacting galaxies. From the radio emission on top of the IR, it might be that two of these galaxies are radio galaxies, or that one is producing extended emission, but the orientation of the radio emission in the centre of the image makes its origin ambiguous, possibly even emission from a background object although this seems less likely. If these are two radio galaxies interacting, it would seem to be a most unusual object - are there many known?

  Posted January 8, 2014 4:13 PM

• by enno.middelberg scientist, translator

  I don't think that there is more than one radio galaxy in this image. The leftmost IR blob coincides with a disk galaxy (seen on SDSS), and the IR object which seems to sit right in the gap between the two radio lobes is clearly visible as a separate object in WISE (Z scale linear stretch to 99%). It only seems to merge with the disk galaxy because of the colour stretch (but I do find it puzzling that this object is not at all visible in SDSS). Anyway, the larger IR object co-located with the leftmost radio peak is probably unrelated.

  Posted January 8, 2014 4:43 PM

• by JeanTate

  I do find it puzzling that this object is not at all visible in SDSS

  I think it is there, just, and very faint and red: SDSS J144556.96+173834.2. Here's a zoomed-in view, centered on it:

  

  Most SDSS fields have lots of small faint blobs, many of which are distant galaxies. In this case, I think there may be a background cluster, at z~0.55±0.1, which the radio source is a member of; here are some of the (other) small faint fuzzies that might be members:

  

  Posted January 8, 2014 8:02 PM