Object of the Week, April 24, 2016 - The Fourcade-Figueroa Shred

[Bob Douglas]

In 2012 from Coonabarabran I saw the FF thread using a 30". At the time I thought the current theory was that it WAS the remnant galaxy that hit Cent A. But thanks to Steve's mentioning the Thompson paper of 1992 I see that it is now believed the FF object should be "demoted" to the FF thread and that NGC 5237 (which I have not looked for--something for the future) is the main (or at least another) remnant.

[timokarhula]

I happened to view the Fourcade-Figueroa system on February 10, while on vacation in Western Australia (my 17th trip to the southern hemisphere). I was doing my 16 nights of dusk to dawn "starathon" with my 10-inch SkyWatcher Dobsonian in Wicherina, about 50 kms due east of Geraldton. The SQM-L was typically 21.5-21.9 and my NELM was 7.8 on the best of nights. Centaurus A was a naked eye object. This night was one of the worse, SQM-L only 21.5. I had not heard about Fourcade-Figueroa before but its large and elongated appearance, the location between Omega Centauri and Centaurus A and the strange name made me interested.

Using 50x - 150x magnification (employing a 8-24 mm Baader Hyperion zoom-eyepiece), I saw nothing first and I had to double-check the location in the Uranometria 2000.0 Atlas. After a while, I noticed a faint, elongated ESE-WNW glow ESE of a 11 mag star, which was the NE star of a rectangle of stars. The glow was indeed the core of the very flat Fourcade-Figueroa galaxy. The object was of a very low surface brightness but not difficult to view once it was located.

/Timo Karhula