This galaxy earns its identity 'peculiar galaxy' for good reason. One would assume those apparent 'bars' would be feeding gas and dust to the core like every other barred spiral. But the core shows little sign of a high-calorie gas and dust diet. So are they really bars? The most energetic star forming regions are in the outer arms. The plot gets even more interesting when Halpha, UV, and IR emission points to a
local superbubble outside the galaxy itself.
Magnetic fields stirred by the same interaction that shaped the barlike structure and arms have also had a significant impact on the outer halo development of this galaxy. SN1999gn occurred on the rim of the superbubble, further evidence that bubbles formed by multiple SNa one day compress enough gas to form rim clusters, some of whose stars in turn go SN in a few million years. 2442's magnetic 'island' feeds energy and particles into the same region as the superbubble. Our own Carina nebula is a hotbed of SN bubbles breeding new new clusters which have their own SNs, which make even newer bubbles which become new clusters, etc. It differs from the 2442 activity in that Carina has relative little magnetic activity. NGC 2442 might seem an unimpressive S-shaped smudge in our eyepieces, but it has devotees of every photon energy band—radio, microwave, IR, visible, UV, and xray—rushing to their theoretical models and N-body simulators.
