[richardo (Rich)]

Originally Posted by madbadgalaxyman

As can be seen from this VLT image at less than 1 arcseconds resolution, the small companion galaxy NGC 1097A looks very strange.

Attachment 101665

If there is no immediate recognition of which morphological class (Hubble type) a galaxy belongs to, one way to decide where it is in the orthodox Hubble Sequence is to ask: "Is this an elliptical galaxy?", "Is this an S0 galaxy?", etc.

But it is really hard to decide what type of galaxy this is, in the absence of information about its three-dimensional shape and about how the stars within it move.....
A Nucleated Dwarf Elliptical galaxy? An S0 galaxy?
Hmmmmm........

It is really hard to tell what type of galaxy this is, as the concept of a spheroid fits the observed structure moderately well, but the concept of a disk also fits the observed structure moderately well.

These Hubble "types" are conceptual templates (morphological classes) that do not apply to all known galaxies, though they are widely applicable in the local galaxy populations at the current time in the evolution of the universe.

You can find quite a lot of galaxies that look like this in very distant Galaxy Cluster environments;
yet this is not a familiar look, to us, because the nearby galaxy population contains very few galaxies that look like this.

Any punters as to what is going on in this galaxy?

Hi Robert, as usual, thanks for the extra info... lots of stuff about on this galaxy!

I'll give it a go...
It is very similar in appearance to another galaxy I had imaged earlier on in the year.
It appears to have been stripped of all its new and mid age star formation, leaving very little in the way of HII and star building matter... only some odd, old stars and dust from its core are only now being extracted. It could have been a Sba galaxy in its life, the weird non uniformity of 1097's arms about 1097A could be a tell tale sign.. or whether it was an Elliptic galaxy, the bar formation is the effects of an extreme tug of war between 1097's arms and the 'disrupted' non uniformity of 1097's arms are from 1097As blackhole core...
This of course is a very simplistic non scientific highly speculative account from some one with little scientific knowledge..... so my apologies in advance

Originally Posted by AstroAussie

Absolutely magnificent image.Thanks for the view.
Lucas

Thanks a heap Lucas! My pleasure!

Originally Posted by marco

Very very nice Richardo, another great shot in your collection! You have several really impressive images in you home page..

Marco

Thanks Marco. Have had a not so bad year weather wise as there's been some good nights which certainly helps in this game.! Lots of little upgrades which have also made life a little easier.

Cheers guys for your great comments.
Muchly appreciated!

All the best
Rich