NGC 2146 has a modest magnitude, but its peculiar form makes it well worth seeking out.
One of the strangest galaxies in the extreme northern sky is the so-called Dusty Hand Galaxy, NGC 2146, which lies in Camelopardalis. Credit: Mark Hanson
One of the most enjoyable things about observing galaxies with your backyard scope is that there are so many unusual forms we can see. Another great example of a distorted galaxy lies in the northern constellation Camelopardalis, the Giraffe. It is NGC 2146, sometimes called the Dusty Hand Galaxy for its unusual appearance.
This strange creature is a barred spiral like our Milky Way but shows a very odd form, classifying it with a morphological type of SB(s)ab pec. The last bit, from Gérard de Vaucouleurs’s classification scheme, means “peculiar,” and this galaxy certainly fits that description.
This galaxy glows somewhat dimly at magnitude 11.4, and spans some 6.0’ by 3.4’. It lies about 70 million light-years away.
The Dusty Hand has a slight warping that’s apparent in high-end amateur astrophotos, and this peculiarity resulted from its interaction with a nearby, much smaller galaxy, NGC 2146A.
The Dusty Hand spans some 80,000 light-years across, making it somewhat smaller than the Milky Way, and has sported two supernovae since 2005. A relatively high rate of star formation classifies it as a starburst galaxy, which presumably was spurred by the interaction with its smaller neighbor.
