Judy Schmidt UGC 7342
UGC 7342 | This one unfortunately is quite grainy and there … | Flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/16525825495/in/dateposted/
This one unfortunately is quite grainy and there is not much that can be done about it. It's also a very interesting and totally weird object
so I had to take a look and see what I could do. Recall Hanny's Voorwerp (or click the link if you've never heard of it). This is in the same
rare class of objects. That is, it's another voorwerp.
It may look like some kind of nebula but this is actually a very distant galaxy with bits of ionized gas stretching out from it for thousands
of light years. The gas appears blueish in this rendition. Also of note is a dust lane crossing the nucleus at a perpendicular angle to the
arms of ionized gas.
At the lower left is a foreground star. Very few background galaxies are visible. Curiously, two conspicuously bright dots are visible in the
northern arm. I can't say whether those are very dim line-of-sight foreground stars or constituents of the voorwerp. I'd say foreground stars
if I were forced to guess. Not totally sure, though.
A couple of William Keel's posts on it are available to read over at the Galaxy Zoo blog. See here and here. (Bill is the principal
investigator for the observations which were used to create this image so he should know a thing or two about it.)
