NGC 4258: A Bent Jet in a Spiral Galaxy

Abstract

The remarkable continuum arms in the spiral galaxy NGC 4258 are suggestive of some form of ejection from the nucleus of this galaxy (Van der Kruit, Oort and Mathewson, 1972). To summarize the observations (see Oort, Figure 2, this volume), the “anomalous spiral arms” are clearly distinct from the normal spiral arms, although wound in the same sense; there is a sharp gradient of the continuum emission on the leading edge of the arms, and an indication that the arms split on the western side; the arms go directly into the nucleus and coincide with Hα emitting filaments (Courtes, Viton and Veron, 1965).