NGC6274

NGC 6274 is either a single spiral galaxy or a pair of them depending on the source. NED considers it a double system while The NGC Project says it refers only to the northern face on spiral. I've gone with NED on the annotated image. Seligman sides with the NGC Project and further adds that while they are at the same distance they aren't likely an interacting pair "as they do not show signs of distortion corresponding to a very close interaction or collision." The southern galaxy certainly has been severely warped by something though I agree the northern galaxy seems undisturbed. Computer simulations show most of the distortion comes well after the time of closest passage. While the individual stars will start to be pulled around it takes a lot of time for that motion to be sufficient to be seen at our great distance. Once moving they continue to for hundreds of thousands of years, long after the interaction started. If the galaxies aren't gravitationally bound one can be far distant by the time we see the distortion it caused. The denser the galaxy the lesser the damage and the more time needed to see it. This could explain why the more distant end of the southern galaxy shows more warp than the end apparently closer to the northern galaxy. If it encountered it first it would be the end to first show the results. So while they may truly not be interacting I'm not all that convinced.

There wasn't much information on this field at NED. While it listed several thousand galaxies in the field very few had much data and only a handful had distance data. I've annotated all that did have distance data as well as a few that didn't. The latter has "na" where the distance would have gone. All with distance are at about the same half-billion light-year distance so likely related being part of a sparse galaxy group. That may apply to those of similar size without distance data but there's no way to tell, unfortunately.

Located just south of the southeastern star of the Keystone in Hercules it was discovered by Albert Marth as #326 in his list of deep sky objects. At a redshift distance of 530 million light-years, the face on galaxy is about 77,000 light-years across. The edge on galaxy appears to lie in front of the face on galaxy but has the same redshift distance. I can't tell if Marth found it, no discoverer is mentioned that I could find. It is slightly larger in size at 97,000 light-years in diameter as seen from our edge on perspective.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10 RGB=2x10' STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6274

NGC6332

This field in Hercules contains part of the NGC 6329 galaxy group anchored by that large elliptical galaxy. The group is about 370 million light-years distant by redshift measurement. While the group contains some galaxies west of this field most of them are to the east of NGC 6329 so that's what I aimed for. I planned to get the eastern galaxies in a later shot but this was the last night I could image for over a month so it never happened as the group was too far west by the time the weather improved. Maybe next year.

NGC 6329 is nearly 250,000 light-years across by my measurement. Truly a huge elliptical galaxy. It was discovered by Édouard Stephan on July 11, 1876. Its core is a strong X-ray source. NED and the NGC project classifies it as simply E while Seligman says E0? Other than that I found little on it.

NGC 6327 lies to its southwest. It is listed by NED as a compact galaxy as does the NGC Project and Seligman though he adds 2 question marks. I found no redshift for it at NED. It too was discovered by Édouard Stephan a week after he found NGC 6329, on July 18, 1876. With no redshift to go by and assuming it is a member of the group which seems likely, it is "only" 74,000 light-years across. Large for a compact galaxy.

NGC 6332 is a rather red spiral galaxy. It is listed as Sa by NED and the NGC project but Sa? by Seligman (only one question mark this time). It was discovered by Édouard Stephan the same night as NGC 6329. Including its faint plumes, it is a huge spiral at 240,000 light-years in size by my measurement.

The last NGC galaxy is NGC 6336 a small spiral galaxy a bit bluer than NGC 6332 but still redder than I expected. It is classed as SAB(s)a by NED, SBa by the NGC project and SBa? by Seligman. It too was discovered by Édouard Stephan the night he found NGC 6332 and 6329. I measure it at 119,000 light-years in size. A bit larger than our galaxy.

There's one IC object in the frame but is an error by Guillaume Bigourdan. He saw the double star as a "cluster, very small, nebulous, very faint double star involved". At least that's how Dreyer portrays it. The double star is correct but obviously not the rest. He also had a 2-degree declination error in everything he did that night. Apparently June 1, 1897 wasn't a good night for him.

Most of the galaxies in the field don't have redshift measurements. It is likely they too are members of the NGC 6329 group so it wasn't deemed worth the effort to get spectroscopic data on but the major ones. That's my idea anyway.

The field contains quite a few quasars. They pretty much disprove Arp's theory that they are nearby objects ejected from active galaxies. While these are large galaxies they don't begin to have sufficient activity for his now discredited theory.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6332

NGC6338

NGC 6338 is the cD galaxy anchoring the SDSS-C4-DR3 3152 galaxy cluster. The cluster contains some 83 members about 400 million light-years away near the head of Draco. NGC 6338 is classed as an S0 galaxy rather than elliptical and has a redshift that puts it 370 million light-years distant, somewhat closer than the listed value for the cluster it anchors. Adding to the confusion NED lists a 6 galaxy NGC 6338 group at 380 million light-years. All this indicates how difficult it is pinning a distance to a galaxy or group of galaxies. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 24, 1789. It isn't in either H400 program

Just north of NGC 6338 is the galaxy pair of VII Zw 700 that share a common halo of stars. Redshift puts the brighter core at 430 million light years. The fainter southern core has no redshift data.

The annotated image shows the distances to the galaxies (G) in the image in billions of light-years. Normally most are over a billion light years distant but in this case, most are around 400 million but I stuck with convention. UvES stands for Ultraviolet Excess Source and often marks probable quasars. Their distances are photographically determined rather than spectroscopically determined so likely have a larger error bar. Most labels are immediately right of the object. When this wasn't possible a line was drawn to the object. Galaxies with names other than those that just give its position (SDSS, MASX, etc.) are shown. Most are IC and NGC numbers. The oddball is GIN. Which simply stands for Galaxy Identification Number. What criterion was used for galaxies to include is unknown to me. NED used it as the primary designation for only one galaxy in the field.

This field may have set a record for the number of galaxies with redshift data. It will be a short-lived record. I'm working on one that will make this one seem lonely by comparison. Also, it may have set a record for galaxies not in NED. Many of the small ones around NGC 6338 aren't even in NED let alone have redshift data, yet several thousand galaxies are shown for my field, just that some of the brighter ones aren't there. I don't know why.

While most of the galaxies are nearby and members of the galaxy cluster some out past 4 billion light-years are to be found with several UvES objects out beyond 10 and even 11 billion light-years.

Edit: This one was researched when I was just starting to look up things in my field. For some reason, I never covered the other NGC or IC galaxies in the image as I would today. For now, I'll just say that NGC 6345 and NGC 6346 were found by Lewis Swift on May 13, 1887. IC 1250 was also found by Lewis Swift but on June 23, 1890. IC 1252, also known as IC 4649 was found twice by Guillaume Bigourdan. He realized it a duplicate but then didn't note this in a way Dreyer realized it was a duplicate causing him to give it a second entry. IC 4650 Bigourdan found IC 4650 on September 6, 1891. This was a day after his duplicate find of IC 4649. I always wonder if such one day differences of objects near each other are due to one being made before midnight and the other after.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=5x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6338

NGC6339

I've had several twofer images for Arp galaxies, now it is a twofer for Arp-like galaxies. One I imaged intentionally, the other snuck in unannounced.

NGC 6339 is an SBd barred spiral galaxy in Hercules about 2.3 degrees due south of M92. It is about 100 million light-years distant. I put it in my Arp-like category due to the very different arms. The eastern arm that comes off the bar has two nice narrow streams of young blue hot stars and a short segment of a third all running parallel to each other though apparently not connected to the bar. The western arm is a single rather diffuse arm consisting of much older, longer lived stars though it too has an outer region of super hot blue stars. The bar itself seems unsymmetrical assuming the brightest knot is the core. If so most of the bar is east of the core. A very odd situation. It appears to have a very red companion well off the northern arm to the northeast. This near edge on spiral has a dust lane same as a normal blue spiral seen edge on. It is MCG +07-35-062. Like nearly all the thousand+ galaxies in this image, it has no redshift data. Is it a true companion or just a foreground or background galaxy? I found nothing useful on this. NGC 6339 was discovered by Lewis Swift on April 21, 1887.

Then serendipity struck:
I was about to call this one as not as interesting as I thought but then upon processing the image CGCG 225-097 at 380 million light-years got my attention at the bottom of the image. It has one heck of an odd plume running mostly north-south at a steep angle to the disk of the galaxy. This too would seem to be a worthy Arp galaxy. Is this a polar ring galaxy in the making? If so where's the material feeding the ring coming from? I found no papers on this oddball of a galaxy. Looks to be a spindle galaxy with an odd plume. Or is it another galaxy hiding behind the galaxy's disk? NED shows it as being only one galaxy, however. Anyone know of any papers on this strange object?

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6339

NGC6340

NGC 6340 is a rather odd face on SA(s)0/a galaxy in Draco I'd wanted to image but was hidden behind my Polaris trees. Redshift puts it about 53 million light-years away though a single Tully-Fisher measurement says 71 million. Note there are 3 other galaxies with redshifts between 52 and 57 million light-years and a pair in the 67 to 74 million light-year range. What this says I don't know. None of these have any distance measurement other than redshift.

What drew my attention to NGC 6340 was a note I found saying it had a very faint straight dust lane right through its core. It is only faintly seen in my image, especially on the west (right) side. It can be faintly followed to the eastern side but I'd never had noticed that without the note to guide me. A note indicates it is not seen in NIR (Near Infrared).

The arm structure is very faint. I've enhanced it in this image more than I normally enhance galaxy contrast. Note the spiral is not symmetrical. It is compressed on the south (bottom) side compared to the north side. It has a LINER nucleus so while the overall reddish color would indicate star formation has been low for many millions of years the core is still actively feeding on something. It was discovered by William Herschel on June 6, 1788. It isn't in either H400 program.

To its north is IC 1251, an Scd? galaxy with about the same redshift. It looks a bit torn up. Has it interacted with another galaxy in the group?

West of IC 1251 is IC 1254 also about the same redshift. It is classed as Sb? pec. It definitely has plumes indicating interaction in the recent past. Was that NGC 6340, IC 1251 or something else or something it merged with? Lots of questions but no answers. Both IC galaxies were discovered by Edward Swift on September 18, 1890.

The fourth galaxy with about the same redshift is PGC 059705. While the first three are mentioned at NED as being part of a group of three galaxies, PGC 059705 is ignored. Why isn't it part of the group? I have no idea.

How do the two galaxies just northeast of IC 1254 fit in? Still more questions without answers I could find.

Except for three galaxy clusters no other individual galaxy had a redshift measurement in NED but for one, RX J1712.5+7218 an X-ray galaxy found by the ROSAT X-ray orbiting telescope. The line I drew in the annotated image goes to the position NED had for it. ROSAT had poor resolution so its positions are uncertain with a 50 second of arc error circle. Could one of the two galaxies just south of the position be the source? A note at NED says "Eastern object in close pair." That would seem to fit the reddish object about 5 seconds of arc south of NED's position.

Since there was plenty of room I identified the other galaxies in the image with designations other than just their coordinates.

While the field is covered by the Sloan survey none had Sloan determined redshifts so the annotated image is rather sparsely labeled.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6340

NGC6366

NGC 6366 is a faint, scattered, very reddened by galactic dust, globular star cluster in the constellation of Ophiuchus 3 degrees southwest of far better known M14. It is about 11,400 light-years from earth and 16,300 light-years from the center of the galaxy. It is classified as class XI. These tend to look much like open star clusters than globular star clusters. It's brightest star is only magnitude 13.6 so it isn't easily resolved even in fairly large amateur telescopes. NED shows it dimmed by 2.5 magnitudes in the V band where human vision is most sensitive. Photometric measurements show it 1.6 magnitudes brighter in red light than blue. This turns its stars quite red in my image. I color balanced to the photometric values, not the spectral values. The latter would have shown it much bluer erasing the reddening of the dust we are forced to look through to see this globular.

I had to move the cluster well right of center to keep the 4.5 magnitude F3V star, HD 157950, out of the frame. Even then it sent a nasty blue gradient across much of the image though it didn't quite reach to NGC 6366 itself. During the image, transparency was poor for the color data. It was a bit better but still far from "normal" when I took the luminance channel. This weak color data made getting color into these stars rather difficult.

It was discovered on April 12 1860 by Friedrich August Theodore Winnecke, a German astronomer. It is said by Auwers it was found using a 3" Merz refractor. He discovered other NGC objects, numbers 1398, 2146, 2276, 4760, 6791, and 6655. He is sometimes said to have found 2300 but it was seen 4 years earlier by Borrelly. He is sometimes credited as co-discoverer of 1360 but Swift found it 3 years earlier. Georg Friedrich Julius Arthur von Auwers another German astronomer included it in his list as Auwers 36. I can't tell if this is an independent discovery. Since these two were friends that shared data it may not be an independent discovery.

While there is a scattering of faint, highly dust-obscured galaxies in the frame none had redshift values so no annotated image was prepared.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6366

NGC6384

NGC 6384 is a low surface brightness galaxy in Ophiuchus about 80 million light-years away. Not a constellation in which you find many nice spiral galaxies! It is more the globular cluster constellation. It is also the Zodiac constellation astrologers ignore. NED classes it as SAB(r)bc and as a LINER galaxy. The NGC Project using a different classification scheme says SBbc I. It is somewhat obscured and of low surface brightness making it a bit of a challenging target. I didn't try to correct the color for reddening. Due to it being somewhat obscured by our galaxies dust. Looking at various color images on the net I find it in a field of far more blue stars than I show. I can't explain the difference but it could be from adjusting the blue back into the galaxy but not excluding the unobscured stars from this blue boost. I used the simple G2V balancing of the unobscured stars. This likely left the galaxy too red due to extinction. It was discovered by Albert Marth on June 10, 1863.

Being in a heavily obscured area of the sky it is not covered by the Sloan survey. Only 6 galaxies are listed in NED as being in this field, none with any distance data but NGC 6384 itself.

Several papers indicated the arms were smooth and featureless. That certainly isn't the impression I got in my image so I had to do some digging. I found a great Hubble Space Telescope image of it that certainly doesn't show the arms as smooth and featureless. Also, several papers indicated there was no star formation going on in the core. Strange as most theories on barred spirals say the bar funnels in gas and dust triggering star formation around the core area. The text with the Hubble image says that they see star formation around the core area triggered by dust and gas that is being funneled into the core. Odd the experts can't seem to agree on what's going on in this much studied galaxy. The HST image and text is at: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1108a/

I'll let their webpage fill in the details sparse as they are.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6384

NGC6395

IC 1261 is a pair of galaxies in a common halo located about 625 million light-years from us in northern Draco not far from the bowl of the "Little Dipper". Left to right they are PGC 060185 and PGC 060186. Redshift puts the latter slightly further away but that is likely just due to their relative motion and not a valid distance difference. The common faint halo measures some 375,000 light-years across. The galaxies themselves, ignoring the halo are much smaller. I get a size of PGC 060185 as 75,000 light-years and PGC 060186 as 85,000 light-years. NED lists both as elliptical E galaxies while Seligman says 060185 is E/S0 and 060186 as E2. The pair was discovered by Lewis Swift on September 8, 1888.

The only other galaxy in the frame with redshift data is NGC 6395. It is listed by NED as Scd: The NGC project says Sc pec and Seligman says Sc?? pec. At first glance, it seems like a normal spiral but when you look closer there are no spiral arms. One rather bright arm segment and then nothing but a random mess of star clouds. Also while it isn't seen edge on it does give the impression of having no central bulge and thus being quite flat though it isn't in any flat galaxy catalog. Redshift puts it only 51 million light-years away. 13 non-redshift measurements (all but one Tully-Fisher) have a median value of 70 million light-years. It was discovered by Edward Swift on September 18, 1884. Its position was later refined by Guillaume Bigourdan. If you look closely at my image you can see it extends a lot further both north and south than it first appears to. Using its full diameter of 172 seconds on my image and the 70 million light-year distance it is 58,000 light-years across. I found surprisingly little on this very strange spiral that has a disk but no real spiral structure. I'm guessing this as well as the large faint extensions are due to something it digested in the recent past.

While NED lists over 4000 galaxies within 20 minutes of the center of my frame only these three have any data to speak of. Unfortunately, this is quite common when working above 70 degrees declination. NED does list a few galaxy clusters but I see only the BCG at those positions and the distances are photographic so not all that reliable. With so little to go on, I didn't bother to create an annotated image.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6395

NGC6426

NGC 6426 is a rather faint, type IX, globular cluster in Ophiuchus in the Herschel 400 list. Herschel found it on July 15, 1781. It is about 66,500 light-years from us and 46,300 light years from the center of the galaxy. That makes it a rather distant globular that we are looking at through the extent of our galaxy and its dust. One of my many imaging projects is to capture as many of the Herschel 400 objects I can from my latitude and limitations to the north due to my Polaris Trees. This is part of that project. Because it is seen through so much of our galaxy's dust it is reddened. I used a recent paper's estimate of reddening to adjust the color balance of the globular. I probably should have isolated the globular when doing this but applied the correction to the entire frame. This likely resulted in the field stars having a bit too much blue though since the reddening is not severe it didn't seem to hurt things too much. After adjustment, some blue stragglers showed up in this cluster. The paper indicated the cluster is one of the most metal poor in our galaxy and about 700 million years older than M92.
http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/bib_query?1999AJ....117.3059H

My notes from my Herschel 400 log from May 19th, 1985 reads: "10" F/5, good transparency, average seeing, 62x and 211x, medium size, very faint, somewhat brighter toward the middle. No resolution." From that, it appears to be a rather poor visual object. Another note from a different observation in which I used a 4" off-axis stop says "not seen".

NED shows only one galaxy in the image though I see a dozen or so. That one is near the bottom edge halfway between the center line and the right edge of the image. There's not even a magnitude estimate for it at NED.

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Related Designations for NGC6426

NGC6470

This is a very confusing region of Draco. NGC galaxies are usually in right ascension order in any small field. Here they bounce all over the place. Catalogs vary is to which galaxy is which. I'm going with what the now not running NGC Project said when I researched this field years ago. I am attaching a map from their site I saved giving Dr. Corwin's research into which galaxy is which. The map, however, misses NGC 6456. It is the bright galaxy right of NGC 6463 too far west for his map to pick up.

It might appear that these galaxies are related but that isn't quite true. Only 4 of the 7 have any distance data, all from redshift measurements. Those with data are NGC 6453, and E/S0 galaxy and NGC 6463, an E2 galaxy are at 550 million light-years so likely related. NGC 6570 (sometimes called NGC 6172 in error says Dr. Corwin) an SBb galaxy is 65 million light-years away and NGC 6571, an Scd: edge on galaxy is at 370 million light-years. I have no data on the others. Not only is this a confusing field it is poorly studied it appears.

I took this early in my digital days before researching these to any extent but I had saved the NGC Project map before the site went mostly dark. I can add that all were discovered by Lewis Swift but on different nights. On June 9, 1886 he found NGC 6463. On September 25, 1886 he found NGC 6456, NGC 6471, NGC 6472 and NGC 6477. That leaves NGC 6463 for which we only know it was in 1886 and likely one of the two nights above but which, if either it is seems lost to history.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10', RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6470