NGC6636

NGC 6636 is a pair of galaxies in eastern Draco north of its head. The pair are located about 200 million light-years distant. The near edge on galaxy is classified as Sc with a Seyfert 2 nucleus at NED. Seligman says Sc? The companion to the east MCG +11-22-047 is listed as a compact galaxy at NED and Sab? by Seligman. A note at NED says this about the companion: "Dwarf satellite connected to the primary by a short thin filament, mostly normal to the surface of the latter. Primary appears to be spheroidal, not spiral. VV 368 relates to the companion on a stem (at the left). On the list 45 VV 679 relates to the whole group." I'd translate this if I could but I think I'd need a few (many?) more shots to do so (booze not image frames). VV 679 is both galaxies while VV 368 refers only to the edge on galaxy according to NED but the comment seems to say it is the dwarf. I don't know where the "companion on a stem" comes from unless it is the blue apparently distant galaxy above the compact galaxy. The thin filament connecting the two is somewhat of a mystery as well. "Normal" usually means perpendicular. The only thing I see this may refer to is the blue arc under the compact galaxy. It is sort of normal to the edge on if an arc is allowed to be used this way. Other sources also refer to the compact being "attached" to the edge on. I'm afraid I don't see that. The comment that the primary appears to be spheroidal again is saying the dwarf is the primary? The whole thing makes no sense to me. It seems all backwards.

NGC 6636 appears to be a quite interesting spiral if we could see it more face on. It seems to have two major arms that are widely drawn out with lots of star clouds. I assume the length is partly due to interaction with the compact galaxy. I measure it at about 115,000 light-years across with the compact companion being only 15,000 light-years across. Normally such a small galaxy would be torn up by its much larger companion. Its very high density apparently saved it from this fate though outer stars likely were lost in the encounter. Now the blue arc below it fits in I don't know.

Then there's the odd blue object above the compact. It doesn't appear related though may be the "stem" referred to in the note. I find nothing in any catalog that corresponds to it. I assume it is some very blue distant galaxy unrelated to these two but that's only speculation on my part. NGC 6636 was discovered by Albert Marth on July 9, 1863.

Being so far north it is in an area of the sky poorly surveyed. Only a red starlike galaxy 6.4 minutes northeast of NGC 6636 had redshift data putting it 1.15 billion light-years away and it is near the center of what is listed as a galaxy cluster at the same distance though no count of galaxies in it is given. There is a similar blue starlike galaxy below it without any data. Otherwise, I see nothing that could be part of the cluster. With so little, I didn't prepare an annotated image. At least this time I didn't lose a frame, green or otherwise to sky conditions as has been the norm this summer thanks to fires out west as well as cloudy weather.

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

Related Designations for NGC6636

NGC6643

NGC 6643 is a nearby spiral galaxy in Draco about 65 million light-years by redshift. I put it on my to-do list because it is giving us the finger in the form of a spiral arm that sticks out at an odd angle. It is a very blue spiral classed as SA(rs)c by NED. The blue color indicates much of its light comes from newly minted massive blue stars. Notes at NED indicate there are extensive H alpha regions outlining the spiral arms. They don't show in my LRGB image, however. Though the blue star clusters forming in them do show as blue knots that give the galaxy most of its spiral structure. Except for the odd rather straight arm to the southwest, its spiral arms are rather weak being overpowered by the star clusters along the arms. What triggered this massive star formation apparently isn't known. At least I was unable to find anything on this. It lacks any close by companions. It was discovered by Eduard Schönfeld in 1858. The exact date is unknown. Horace Tuttle then discovered it independently on September 1, 1859.

To the northeast (upper left) of NGC 6643 is 2MASX J18212063+7438188. It has a rather strong but small core surrounded by a very faint, face on disk. I needed a lot more time to see any detail in this faint ghost disk. Where'd its stars go? Have they died or just not yet been born? It's a very strange object. Some star formation must be going on someplace in it, core most likely, as this is usually a requirement to create the IR light seen in the 2MASS survey.

I found little information on this area of the sky. NED only lists 8 galaxies, including NGC 6643 in the field. All 8 are from the 2MASS survey of IR emitting galaxies. The only other galaxy of any angular size in the image beside NGC 6643 and the "ghost" galaxy is the very blue smudge to the north-northeast. While it too is blue, star formation has apparently slowed in it as it isn't in the 2MASS survey or any catalog at NED. It seems to be anonymous as are the vast majority of the background galaxies.

There appears to be a distant galaxy cluster near the left edge of my image a bit above center near a close white pair of stars. I found nothing on it, however.

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

Related Designations for NGC6643

NGC6654

NGC 6654 is a rather strange galaxy in Draco. It's distance isn't well known. Redshift puts it at about 80 million light-years distant though a single Tully measurement says 96 million. Assuming the 80 million light-year distance it is about 63,000 light-years in diameter. NED classifies it as (R')SB(s)0/a while others say simply SB0 or something in-between. In any case, all see it as a barred galaxy. One paper even says it has two bars the obvious one and a much smaller inner one at a somewhat different angle. Oddly my image, however, sees it not as a bar at all but an inner "Saturn-like" ring rather than a bar. I find few images on the net to help here. The disk shows a faint spiral structure with an odd dark area to the northwest. It was that odd gap that caused me to put it on the to-do list. The galaxy was discovered by Lewis Swift on September 11, 1883.

There's little on the field this far north. Only a quasar has any redshift data besides NGC 6654. Little else is identified at NED. I have noted everything they have listed as a galaxy or has a redshift even though they don't have distance data. Hundreds of Ultraviolet Excess objects are listed, most of which are blue stars. I didn't wade through these to find which were galaxies. Though a test showed most, not all, of the obvious galaxies without an annotation were listed as being an UvS rather than a galaxy at NED. Since none had redshifts I didn't both to note them as it would be a difficult chore to separate them from the stars. Also, their error bar for positions is over 5' of arc meaning many overlap making it hard to tell what is what. I wanted to know more about the blue object in the northern halo of PGC 061821. But it wasn't listed in NED. It doesn't appear to be a star and doesn't have the PSF to be a blue quasar. Could that rather small galaxy have a huge blue star cluster? That's about all I can come up with.

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

Related Designations for NGC6654

NGC6667

This is one messed up galaxy, in more ways that it may first appear. First off it is obviously a highly disturbed galaxy with huge plumes. These would indicate it is a result of a recent merger. Also, it is quite red, even the plumes aren't very blue indicating the merger didn't result in much new star formation in these plumes. Usually, tons of new stars form in these plumes making them rather blue in color due to the short-lived massive blue stars that form there. But this galaxy has an overall reddish hue, while some areas look blue if you check the color in an image processing program you'll find even those areas are somewhat red. It's just that thanks to the contrast to the very red regions these look somewhat blue when they really aren't. So we are seeing an old galaxy here. If new stars are forming they are hidden behind dust shields, likely near the galaxy's core. It is classified at NED as SABab? pec. The NGC project says Sbab/P. This is likely a typo and they intended SBab/P which is what Seligman says for its classification.

It is messed up in another way having nothing to do with its condition. It carries three NGC numbers, NGC 6667, NGC 6668 and NGC 6678. Normally this is due to independent discoveries by three different astronomers, each giving somewhat different coordinates causing Dreyer to enter it under the different numbers. In this case, however, it was the same astronomer finding it three different times and not realizing it. The award for such sloppiness goes to Lewis Swift who found it on September 11, 1883 and listed by Dreyer as NGC 6667. Then again he found it on June 8 1885 and listed as NGC 6678. Finally he "found" it yet again nearly 14 months later on July 31, 1886 getting the designation NGC 6668. The second IC tries to equate it to NGC 6677 a degree to the south so that can't be right. Most think it a typo for 6667.

This galaxy is located in Draco. Redshift puts it at 115 million light-years but non-redshift measurements at NED all say it is at least about 130 million light-years distant with a median value of about 140 million light-years. I'll adopt this value for measuring its size. In my image, the plumes stretch some 5.67 minutes of arc. At that distance that is some 230,000 light-years. Though the main portion of the galaxy is only 1.6 minutes reducing it to a typical spiral size of 66,000 light-years before disruption by the merger.

Being far north and in the summer sky, it is in a poorly studied region. Only one other galaxy has redshift data and that is a faint starlike galaxy on the southern edge of my image at pixel 1372x1324 +/- about 5 pixels for those who absolutely have to find it. It is some 4.89 billion light-years distant and is listed as an AGN. The position is listed as being up to 5 seconds of arc in error. It is NEP 5750 for those wanting to look it up. That stands for the North Ecliptic Pole catalog if you were wondering.

The only other obvious galaxy in the image is the flat galaxy FGC 2208 southwest of NGC 6667. NED has no distance data on it. It is listed as an Sc galaxy. With nothing much to annotate, I didn't prepare an annotated image.

This was taken on a night of rather poor seeing that was unusually warm. That results in poor transparency and my being unable to reach my normal summer imaging temperature of -25C. I had to work at -15C which degrades the S/N slightly. I had just time enough for 5 luminance frames before the moon interfered too much. That extra frame brings the signal to noise ratio back to normal if transparency is normal which it wasn't so this one is still a bit noisy. For some reason, I never went back to retake it. However, due to conditions, I didn't take color data that night. I took color data a few nights later with better transparency but even worse seeing. Not sure if this was a good idea or not as the red data really suffered from seeing creating bloated stars that were a pain to deal with.

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

Related Designations for NGC6667

NGC6670

NGC 6670 is a pair of interacting edge on galaxies. Though catalogs consider it a triple or even quadruple galaxy it is seen in a Hubble Space Telescope image to be just a pair of galaxies being torn apart and reassembled due to their interaction. You can read more about it at http://hubblesite.org/image/2295/news_release/2008-16 and see the Hubble image of this train wreck. Both galaxies are strong in HII emission though the eastern one is considered stronger in this respect. Oddly, it is the western one that is reddest in my image. Apparently, that comes from red stars rather than HII activity. NED classifies only the eastern member as a spiral. Though notes consider the small blue cloud at the far eastern end of the mess as being a blue compact however the HST image shows this to be in error. I never did figure out what those saying it is 4 galaxies are seeing as the fourth object. The only candidate is CGCG 301-032 to the southeast at the same redshift but it seems too far away to be the fourth member.

NGC 6670 is located in Draco at a distance of nearly 400 million light-years by redshift. Each is about 75,000 light-years across with the total projected size being about 125,000 light-years. It was discovered by Lewis Swift on July 31, 1886. It is in a part of the sky not covered by many surveys including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey so little information is available. What few are listed as galaxies at NED, with or without redshift data are listed in my annotated image. Many stars and galaxies are listed at NED simply as UvS for being an Ultraviolet Source. None with redshift data and all listed by approximate coordinates. These have a fairly large error circle making identification difficult in some areas. With many hundred listed, I only identified a handful of the brighter ones, all with the GALEXASC prefix.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6670

NGC6677

There appears some debate over which galaxy is NGC 6677, NGC6679 and IC 4763. You can read all about it at http://cseligman.com/text/atlas/ngc66a.htm#6677 I didn't know of this issue as all of my sources, NED, SIMBAD, The Sky 6 Pro agreed with Seligman and made no mention of the issue. Because of this, the discovery dates of these is a bit confusing. I'm going with Seligman and saying all were discovered by Lewis Swift with NGC 6676 on May 30, 1886, NGC 6677 on June 8 1885 and NGC 6679 on October 25, 1885. IC 4763 is a prediscovery of NGC 6679 by Guillaume Bigourdan sometime in 1860.


All three are about 300 million light-years distant by redshift measurement though NGC 6676 has a slightly greater non-redshift distance at NED. All are in Draco.

There's another member of the group, PGC 062029. It too is about 300 million light-years distant. NED classifies it as Spherical though to me it is a spiral with a faint plume to the east off the north end. NGC 6679 is listed as a Compact galaxy which I can agree with. NGC 6677 is Sbc. A note at NED reads: "Peculiar spiral [UGC] of very blue color. Two (2) arcsec to the north is a pair of compact galaxies VII Zw 814." I find this odd as nearly everything seems wrong. While I see some blue in it it is mostly yellow-white rather than "very blue". While VII Zw 814 is the designation of NGC 6679 and PGC 062029 they are 2 minutes north not two seconds. It calls both compact galaxies. As mentioned I don't see PGC 062029 as being compact, but a Sa spiral with a plume.

I think it quite likely that all three have interacted in the past. It seems quite certain the northern two have and I see enough oddity in NGC 6677 to add it to the list.

Being so far north there's little else on the field. The only other galaxy with redshift data barely made it into my frame at the bottom, a 2 micron flat galaxy 2MFGC 14446 at 260 million light-years by redshift. The difference is small enough it too could be a member of the group Only one other galaxy shows detail so I included it in the annotated image even though it is just listed as a Uv source in NED with no distance data. Is it part of the group? I can only guess and say maybe.

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

Related Designations for NGC6677

NGC6689

NGC 6689/90 is a near edge-on spiral galaxy in Draco. It is classified as SBcd with HII emission. It's distance isn't all that well determined. Redshift puts it only 18 million light-years away but readings that close are highly unreliable. Tully-Fisher estimates vary from 40 to 54 million light-years with a median value of 45 million which is also about the mean value. Adopting that distance it is about 57,000 light-years in diameter. It went on my to-do list due to its odd dust lane and the lack of much of a real hint of spiral structure. The dust lane seen in the side slightly toward us makes an odd almost V-shaped curve to the south then heads north cutting across what little spiral structure the galaxy has and vanishes off the top end rather than following the expected spiral pattern.

Notes at NED indicate it has a strange rotation curve. "Both sides of the rotation curve behave differently: the redshifted side has a solid body rotation curve, whereas the blueshifted side exhibits a plateau around 35 km s^-1^ up to 40 arcsec, then it increases again without ever reaching the redshifted side. There is no companion in the vicinity that could explain such an asymmetry in the rotation curve." Also, radio observations show the HI disk is strongly warped. So while no companion is seen it is likely there is one or a recently "digested" one. The digestion idea might explain the odd dust lane as well.

The galaxy has no hint of a bright core and I see little hint of a true central bulge. At first glance, the galaxy appears rather "normal" but when you look more closely it is quite odd indeed. I wish we could see it more face on.

The galaxy has the odd honor of being discovered 4 times by only 2 observers. Seems Heinrich d'Arrest found it first on August 22, 1863 then again sometime later. I can't find that date. While he didn't catch it was the same object the positions match. This results in it being listed as NGC 6689 by Dryer. Then on August 16, 1884 Lewis Swift made his first discovery of it. Later (again I can't find a date) he recorded it a second time with a position about 1 minute from that of his first discovery and the positions d'Arrest found. Dreyer caught that the first position was the same as d'Arrest but failed to realize the second position was in error and thus it went on the NGC as NGC 6690. I think it safe to say this second position isn't related to the unseen possible companion. You can read about this mix-up at the entries for either NGC entry at the NGC Project.

Since no other galaxy in the field had any redshift data at NED I didn't prepare an annotated image. This was taken on one of the rare good nights here this year. Even the fires out west kept their smoke out of my skies this night. I used to have skies like this regularly but the last two years they've been exceedingly rare I'm sorry to report.

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

Related Designations for NGC6689

NGC6691

NGC 6691 is a spiral galaxy located in Draco some 260 million light-years from us. Arp has a category in his atlas for 3 armed spirals. All three he included are really two-armed spirals with a major spur off one to make the third arm. Thus, I include this one as falling into the same category. It has two main arms coming off the bar and a large spur overlaying one of those arms that first goes north on the western side of the galaxy they a second spur comes off it going northeast. Much smaller spurs are seeing coming off the other arm. The galaxy to the south is listed in a note at NED as being a companion. This field is so poorly studied it has no catalog entry in NED. All other galaxies in the image that NED identifies are from the 2MASS IR catalog which only picks up galaxies bright in 2 micron IR radiation. The companion apparently doesn't have enough. It was discovered by Lewis Swift on August 16, 1884.

In the cropped and enlarged image, I've put NGC 6691 well off center to catch, in the opposite corner, two or maybe three galaxies. The two brightest are in the 2MASS catalog as 2MASX J18400484+5545142 and 2MASX J18400579+5545152. I can't tell for sure if the former is separate from the disk galaxy behind it or just a very bright core. I tend to think it is just another elliptical/S0 like the other one to the east and the disk object is a third galaxy whose core is mostly hidden by the 2MASS galaxy. NED is of no help here listing no size for either of the two galaxies.

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

Related Designations for NGC6691

NGC6700

NGC 6700 is a barred spiral galaxy in Lyra about 1.75 degrees southwest of M57 and about 200 million light-years distant by redshift and 260 million light-years by Tully-Fisher measurements. I measure its size at 107,000 to 140,000 light-years depending on which distance you believe. I put it on my list as in the POSS plates it looked rather unsymmetrical. That isn't as strong in my image, however. NED classifies it as SB(rs)c while the NGC project doesn't show the ring structure saying SBc. Seligman loves question marks so says SBc?. It was discovered by Édouard Stephan on August 17, 1873. While there are a few faint background galaxies in the image none had redshift data. With nothing but coordinates for a name and not even a magnitude I didn't annotate the image.

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

Related Designations for NGC6700

NGC6712

This field in Scutum fascinated me from the first time I saw it in my 10" scope nearly 50 years ago. The Skelnate Pleso 1950 atlas was the bible of the time and showed both objects. But I could only see one. It was just a small, faint puff of light. The problem was which object was it. I had no access to any observing reports or magnitude estimates back then. I figured I was seeing NGC 6712, the globular but it wasn't until years later when blinking the field with the Lumicon UGC filter showed me the planetary IC 1295. After that, I could see it, barely, without the filter. Doubt I'd have ever spotted it without the filter however. Seeing was poor the night I took this. It is on the reshoot list but so far that hasn't happened so I am going with this poor data.

NGC 6712:
Discovered by Le Gentil in 1749. He described it as a "true nebula" rather than a star cluster like the nearby M11. In 1784 William Herschel "rediscovered" it and again described it as a round nebula. It wasn't until nearly 50 years later his son John finally saw it as a globular star cluster. The cluster is about 23,000 light-years away. It is thought that due to its orbit carrying it within 1000 light-years of the Milky Way's core, it is being stripped of stars each passage.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9811173

While it still contains some million stars it must have been far larger billions of years ago. We see it through the dense Scutum star cloud so it is severely dimmed by the dust in the cloud. I expect it would be spectacular if we could see it in the clear.

IC 1295:
Information on this object is hard to come by. The central star is listed as being 15th magnitude but appears far fainter to me. I'm assuming its the faint blue star at the center rather than the brighter off center stars. My blue data shows a strong ring edging the faint outer shell. It didn't register in the luminance image so is lost in my color image. Next time, if there is one, I'll take a bunch of blue images and see if using it as the luminance layer will help bring it out. Other than that narrow ring the nebula has no fine detail, showing just a double shell with a fainter center. I was able to find only one distance estimate by a grad student in the Georgia State University Astronomy department siting a paper by Cahn et al put it about 1300 light-years distant, thus in front of the star cloud that so dims NGC 6712. The nebula was first seen by Truman Safford on August 29, 1867.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6712