The 'Taffy' galaxies UGC 12914/5

The interacting spiral galaxy pair UGC 12914/5 was mapped with the 'VLA' for a 1.49 GHz atlas of the IRAS Bright Galaxy Sample. Half of the flux from UGC 12914/5 arises from the gap between UGC 12914 and UGC 12915, across which the radio contours are drawn like filaments of taffy. The bright radio continuum connecting UGC 12914 with UGC 12915 is a synchrotron source which therefore probably contains both cosmic rays and magnetic fields. It is suggested that the filaments were stripped from UGC 12914 and UGC 12915 as their stellar disks interpenetrated during a recent encounter; this implies that the radio bridge is a relic whose properties contain information about direct collisions of galaxies with gaseous disks. New maps have been made of the radio continuum and H I line emission from UGC 12914/5 in order to verify the stripping hypothesis.