The field surrounding NGC 7603: cosmological or non-cosmological redshifts?

We present new observations of the field surrounding the Seyfert galaxy NGC 7603, where four galaxies with different redshifts--NGC 7603 (z=0.029), NGC 7603B (z=0.057) and two fainter emission line galaxies (z=0.245 and z=0.394)--are apparently connected by a narrow filament, leading to a possible case of anomalous redshift. The observations comprise broad and narrow band imaging and intermediate resolution spectroscopy of some of the objects in the field. The new data confirm the redshift of the two emission-line objects found within the filament connecting NGC 7603 and NGC 7603B, and settles their type with better accuracy. Although both objects are point-like in ground based images, using HST archive images we show that the objects have structure with a FWHM=0.3-0.4 arcsec. This and the relative strength and width of the main spectral lines allow us to classify these as HII galaxies with very vigorous star formation, while the rest of the filament and NGC 7603B lack star formation. We delineate the halo of NGC 7603 out to 26.2 mag/square arcsec in the Sloan r band filter and find evidence for strong internal distortions. New narrow emission line galaxies at z=0.246, 0.117 and 0.401 are also found at respectively 0.8, 1.5 and 1.7 arcmin to the West of the filament within the fainter contour of this halo. The probability of three background galaxies of any type with apparent B-magnitudes up to 16.6, 21.1 and 22.1 (the observed magnitudes, extinction correction included) being randomly projected on the filament of the fourth galaxy (NGC 7603) is computed resulting ~ 3 x 10^(-9).Comment: 34 pages, 9 figures, Astronomy & Astrophysics accepte