Sorry about the late report, I’ve had a house guest for the last 4 days and got side-tracked.
When I first started doing a little due-diligence regarding this object I just put “Arp 103” into my search engine to see what I might find, looking mostly for great pictures to share. To my surprise, I found several references for (2) different locations for Arp 103. I’ve observed the “Hercules” version several times, but I had never heard of the Virgo version, which indicated that IC 3481, along with IC 3481A and IC 3483 made up the trio. While this is indeed a very nice trio, I’m not sure that it should be correctly identified as “Zwicky’s Triplet” unless there really are 2 of them. It is, in fact, Arp 175. Our pal Steve Gottlieb included this guy in his report here on June 6th, 2016, and even Steve called it Zwicky’s Triplet…
Our friend Alvin Huey published the graphics that he used for an OSP talk in 2011 and shows Arp 103 as being in Virgo, but the photo he uses is the group in Hercules (page 6)… so I’m not the only one who is somewhat confused!
Perhaps each is “a” Zwicky Triplet rather than “the” Zwicky Triplet. All I know is that when I searched for “Zwicky’s Triplet” in Simbad, it produced Arp 103 in Hercules. .
This “other” Zwicky’s Triplet, Arp 103, is well-placed these days near midnight in my part of the world here in Southern California, being nearly overhead. Arp classified this triplet under “Elliptical and elliptical-like galaxies connected to spirals”.
I have observed Arp 103 several times over the years. Photos of Arp 103 show a very tenuous arc extending upwards from the bright member of the southern pair (PGC 59061)…
… but I have never seen even a hint of this arc. The members of Arp 103 are pretty dim and featureless, but they are not particularly difficult to see on a good night with enough aperture. All appear to be “elliptical-like”, and I have no clue as to which one is supposed to be a spiral. Perhaps someone here has had a better look at them than I have.
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