Stargazing Live
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 7:45AM I watched Stargazing Live last night - it was deluging with rain here in Sierra Cabrera (and still is this morning) and it was a good clear night at Jodrell Bank back in the North West of England! It was interesting to see Orion clearly visible in the sky both at Jodrell Bank and at the site of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) in the Northern Provice of South Africa - except of course that there it was upside down!
I liked the shape of the galaxy NGC 1365 that was shown from South Africa and it reminded me of the shape of my (SN Search) galaxy NGC 2535 image of a few days ago. In fact though they are quite different - NGC 1365 is a barred spiral galaxy and NGC 2535 is not. NGC 2535 is interacting with NGC 2536 which is also shown but the interaction is not at all obvious from the 30s image that was taken as part of my Supernova Search programme. The interacting pair are known as ARP 82 in Halton Arp's Catalogue and is thoroughly described in a paper on the website of East Tennessee State University. This includes an animation of the interaction.
NGC 1365 is believed to possible be a similar shape to our own Milky Way Galaxy following observations from the Spitzer Telescope
