NGC 3368 (UGC 5882, 1044+1205)

NGC 3368 (UGC 5882, 1044+1205) -- The UV image of this bright Sab LINER galaxy has a single, unresolved compact source with f(2300 Å ~5 ×10-17 ergs s-1 cm-2 Å-1 about $0.1" north of the centroid of a weak diffuse light distribution. We have verified by means of a ground-based CCD image that the source is at the galaxy's nucleus position. It is $5.5" south of the center of the image because the galaxy nucleus coordinates input to HST were off by that much due to galaxy isophote distortion by a dust lane in the GASP image. This is another example of a ``UV-bright'' LINER (Maoz et al. 1995), though with a central point source fainter by 1-2 orders of magnitude. In contrast to the other UV-bright LINERs, whose observed UV fluxes are sufficient to explain their observed emission-line fluxes by photoionization, in this source the observed UV flux is 20 times less than the minimum required (see Maoz 1996). This LINER is therefore reddened or not excited through photoionization, and could be an intermediate case between UV-bright and UV-dark.