Markarian and the Blob

Today’s OOTW features an OOTD written by Alice on the 15^th of July.

117 million light years away there lies a Markarian galaxy and a very interesting companion. As Alice says in her OOTD, these Markarians are galaxies that emit strongly in ultraviolet and visible light, and are often a host to AGN.

During the observation run at Kitt Peak the Galaxy Zoo team had some spare telescope time going after observing a list of Voorwerpjes, so Bill Keel asked Zooites on the forum to provide objects to get a spectrum for:

MRK 490 and its blue companion.

The bright blue blobby companion just above the Markarian galaxy MRK 490 centred in the picture above was one such object that was observed. The companion is brimming with new stars as shown by the huge emission line (amongst others) of OIII at around 5000 angstroms in the spectrum below, the object is very close to the galaxy below it going by their redshift, so it is suspected to be interacting with it!

Spectrum for MKN 490's companion; click for larger image.