Explore the UGC 10214, the Tadpole Galaxy, a faint, peculiar spiral galaxy in Draco with a dramatic tidal tail and active star formation — an elusive but rewarding target for deep-sky observers and astroimagers.
A very faint interacting galaxy, UGC 10214, is nicknamed the Tadpole Galaxy and offers observers quite a challenge to spot. Credit: HST/STScI
The universe is filled with galaxies, and many really faint galaxies are interesting objects from an astrophysical point of view, but they offer backyard observers with amateur telescopes quite a challenge. Such an object is UGC 10214, the so-called Tadpole Galaxy in Draco. This barred spiral has a long tidal tail of material streaming off one of its ends, thus the reason for the nickname. It is a heavily disrupted barred spiral, and the tidal tail, which stretches 280,000 light-years long, shows patchy areas of star formation.
This galaxy glows meekly at magnitude 14.4 and spans a mere 3.6’ by 0.8’, so a dark sky and a telescope of 10- or 12-inches is normally required to spot it. Of course, astroimagers fare much more easily with such challenging objects due to the ability to capture long exposures.
The Tadpole Galaxy lies some 400 million light-years away, and is classed with the morphological type of SB(s)c pec, the last bit, “peculiar,” referring to its obvious signs of interaction. Although its main designation comes from the Uppsala General Catalogue of galaxies, it also carries a number from Halton Arp’s catalog of peculiar galaxies, Arp 188.
What’s going on with this strange object? Astronomers believe that a compact interacting galaxy crossed the Tadpole’s plane about 100 million years ago, drawing out the long arm of luminous material. The interloping galaxy is now visible behind the main galaxy’s disk (above the left of the main nucleus in the accompanying HST shot).
The Tadpole Galaxy has produced two supernovae: SN 2007cu (which peaked at magnitude 18.9) and SN 2008dq (which grew to magnitude 18.3).
