CCD IMAGING OF NGC 4861 - MORPHOLOGY AND BRIGHTNESS DISTRIBUTION

We discuss narrow band CCD imaging of NGC 4861 in continua at 4500 ang strom, 5300 angstrom and 6300 angstrom as well as in Halpha, Hbeta and [OIII] lambda 5007 angstrom lines. We find that the system exhibits a double nucleus structure and a counter-tail to the well-known NE chai n of HII regions. The mean value of lines and continua frames for the main body brightness distribution of NGC 4861 is R-2.04 +/- 0.35, comp arable to the Hubble-Reynolds law R-2 . The three mentioned characteri stics indicate that NGC 4861 might have undergone a merger process. Th e time elapsed from the beginning of the phenomenon is set to be small er than three crossing times. New observations are proposed to confirm or reject the merger scenario for this peculiar galaxy.