Harold Corwin

There is no problem with the identification of this strange object; Royal Frost's position is within an arcminute of its central condensation. But there are two other objects superposed on the arms of the galaxy, equidistant from the center, one northeast, the other southwest. These form an apparent linear triple object, immersed in nebulosity.

The resolution of the southern sky survey plates is not quite good enough to tell if the two flanking objects are superposed stars, knots in a single galaxy, or nuclei of three interacting galaxies -- or two interacting galaxies with a single star superposed. The 2MASS image makes the galaxy look like a single galaxy with a star superposed northeast and a knot to the southwest. But the "knot" is faint enough and small enough that it, too, could be a star.

Based on the 2MASS image I'm going to suggest that IC 5095 is a single galaxy with a bright knot to the southwest, and a brighter star superposed to the northeast. But this is just one interpretation of the images; we'll need spectra of all three objects to tell us just what is going on here.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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