 NGC
3395 and NGC 3396 form a very nice pair of galaxies. This pair
is among the brightest and best listed by Arp in his Catalog of
Interacting Galaxies. Smaller scopes will show a tiny faint
V-shaped smudge of light. Higher magnification in a larger
scope (> 6 inches) will split the galaxies into two. In
most scopes NGC 3395 will appear as the brighter of the two.
It is smaller with a brighter nucleus. But I found the larger
NGC 3396 to be the dominant object in my 18 inch.
In my 18-inch at 94x
these galaxies were small but surprisingly bright and quite obvious.
At 270x NGC 3396 appeared larger and fatter (more diffuse) than its
neighbor. NGC 3395 appeared sharper and skinnier with a
bright, thin inner region. Buried within this inner regain
appeared a brighter still, star like core.
Walter Scott Houston
wrote that the bar connecting these two galaxies is not apparent in
smaller scopes. In my 18-inch I was able to see the two
overlap, much like in the picture above, but I'm not certain this is
a true bar of material rather than simple overlap. With
averted vision I could see a straight line of nebulosity extending
off the end of NGC 3395 which overlapped its neighbor. I did
not note the southern spiral arm in NGC 3396 which is so obvious on
photographs, but at the time I didn't know to look for it so it may
be worth a shot in larger scopes.
The field in an 6-inch at 150x. North is down and east is to the right.
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