NGC6894

NGC 6894 is a planetary nebula in Cygnus. It may be about 5.000 light-years distant. It was discovered by William Herschel on July 17, 1784. It is in the second H400 program. While many planetary nebulae are teal in color due to strong OIII emission this one is more red than teal. Whether this comes from H alpha or NII emission I don't know. They are very close emission lines and need a 3nm filter to separate these. Not having such narrow filters and not finding much in the literature I don't know the answer to this question. I'm going to guess it is both with NII being stronger but that is a pure guess with nothing to back it up.

Much longer exposures than mine show that it may be interacting with the interstellar medium. Gasses it emitted before the planetary nebula formed appear to have aligned with the magnetic field of the galaxy. If so this may help to understand the interstellar medium at least in this part of the galaxy.

This is another very early image that needs reprocessing if I ever find the time.

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

Related Designations for NGC6894

NGC6905

NGC 6905, a planetary nebula in Delphinus, is also known as the "Blue Flash". Distances to planetary nebulae are hard to determine unless close enough for trigonometric observation. I found estimates of this one ranging from 3,200 to 8,500 light-years with the most modern estimate (2004) coming in at about 5,300 light-years. Put on the hip waders and read about it at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004MNRAS.353..589P .

The nebula was discovered by William Herschel in 1784 with his 18.7" reflector. The central star is a pulsating white dwarf which has a hydrogen deficient atmosphere. It is in the original H400 observing program. My notebook from that has an entry from May 20, 1985 with my 10" f/5 at 180x on a good night. It reads; "Round planetary nebula tucked neatly between a bright and dim field star. No detail is seen though the UHC brightens the view and makes it a bit larger." Apparently, I never noticed the "dim" star was inside the nebula's fainter regions. I suspect I was only seeing the bright center since I called it round rather than pointed on both ends.

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

Related Designations for NGC6905

NGC6911

NGC 6911 is a very strange spiral galaxy in eastern Draco about 105 light-years distant by redshift and other methods. It has a drawn out eastern arm and nothing much in the way of an arm on the other side other than the ring the one arm comes off of. Instead there's a disorganized puff of stars where the other arm would be. This is a very lonely galaxy with no others in the field. NED came up empty looking for a related galaxy even far outside my field. So how did it get so screwed up. Is it the product of a merger? I found virtually nothing on this galaxy in the literature. NED has no redshift data on anything else in the image and only a half dozen or so other galaxies are even listed. Those lack even a magnitude reading.

Located far to the north it isn't surprising to find the field full if galactic cirrus, aka IFN. This is dust well above the plane of the galaxy reflecting and sometimes emitting light due to the illumination of the stars of our galaxy below rather than by an individual star as is the case with most reflection or emission nebulae. Unfortunately August turned out to start off as poorly as July with horrid transparency. While the image uses 7 luminance frames I took 16 over three nights to get the 7 I used. They likely have fewer photons than 2 normal frames would. The color data was taken the second and third night with 4 frames each color each night of which one each night was usable. Though I doubt there's even 10 minutes worth of signal in all 8 of each color and only slightly less in the 2 of each I used. So this one is highly suspect as to color. There wasn't anywhere near enough color to pick up the IFN so it is not colored at all. The galaxy is surprisingly red. I think it likely due to dust reddening as it is near the edge of the Milky Way. The "bright" star in the upper right corner is a G3V star so nearly white and that is how it came out indicating the color is likely correct. The blue tinge is normal due to chromatic issues with the corrector lens of the scope which is not color corrected and thus can show this blue tinge on very bright stars.

Again this is an object I can't find posted anyplace on the net in color. At least not under the NGC 6911 name. Nor did I note in my notes why it was on my list other than the notation "IFN?" beside it so somehow I suspected it was there. It is hinted at in the POSS plates so that might be why the note.

NGC 6911 was discovered by Lewis Swift on june 9, 1885.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=7x10' (equal to about 2x10' on a good night) RGB=2x10' (more like 1x2' on a good night), STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6911

NGC6914

This object in Cygnus has an identity crisis. Is it the red emission nebula, the top blue reflection nebula or what? Simbad says it is an emission nebula but points different places depending on how you enter Simbad. NED points to the top blue reflection nebula, Seligman points to a bit different area and quotes Dreyer saying "very faint, very large, irregularly round, diffuse, 2 stars attached on west". That might point to the entire region or just what? I can't tell what is meant by 2 stars attached on the west. APOD takes the easy way out and calls it a "complex of Nebulae" and shows a very deep picture of the blue emission nebula rather centered on the lower of the two reflection nebulae near the center of my image but includes the southern one I didn't fully include. There are many images of this region, again with little agreement as to what is NGC 6914. In any case, most agree the reflection nebula I cut off at the bottom is vdB 131 and the middle one is vdB132. I'm going with the upper being NGC 6914. Otherwise, I'd have thought it too would have a vdB designation. Vdb 133 is a very different reflection nebula in Cygnus which I've also imaged. The bright emission nebula along the left side is LBN 273 (south part) and LBN 281 (northern part). The dark nebula above and right of NGC 6914 is LDN 899. At least that's my take on this field.

This was one of my first attempts on a field like this taken back in 2007 when I had poor processing skills and tools. I had started to learn what it takes to image such a field. I got lucky with the processing. I tried several more times in 2007 to improve this image and each time it got worse. I put it down ignorant beginner's luck. The original data is on a hard drive in the basement buried who knows where with a backup in the safe deposit box 22 miles from here. I lost my entire film collection when a large oak limb on a tree came through the roof in the attic where all prints, negatives and slides were stored. Except for a few elsewhere nearly 50 years of film work was wiped out. Now I'm paranoid and have backups of original data two places miles apart and the TIF and JPG images several more places.

Due to no H alpha, the emission nebula was weak. I hoped 80 minutes rather than my usual 40 of luminance would compensate but it didn't. Due to the noise being a bit higher than normal due to insufficient data I reproduced this at 1.5" per pixel rather than my usual 1" per pixel. That hides a lot of the noise.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=8x10', RGB=2x10' no H alpha, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6914

NGC6922

NGC 6922 is a very strange face on spiral in Aquila. Not exactly a constellation known for its galaxies. NED classifies it as SA(rs)c pec: with HII emission. The HII seems well below my poor seeing limits. Its redshift puts it some 250 million light-years distant which doesn't help my resolution any. It is about 70,000 light-years across at its widest point. A note at NED asks: "Small companion superimposed?" I assume this refers to the small fuzzy white object to the right (west) of its core. Unfortunately, this field is located deep in the Zone of Avoidance so there are few surveys of galaxies conducted in this area. Whatever that white fuzz ball is it isn't listed in any catalog I found. It appears to be either a huge star cloud in the galaxy or another galaxy. If a galaxy is it beyond or in front of NGC 6922? If the latter it is likely a compact dwarf of some sort. NGC 6922 was discovered by Albert Marth on July 24, 1863 using a 48" reflector. You can see a drawing of this nightmare to use scope at: http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/ngcic/persons/lassell.htm . I have to wonder what these astronomers would think of what we amateurs can do today with far more convenient scopes and computer imaging.

The one odd arm of this galaxy is what drew my interest. It seems to fit Arp's class for spiral galaxies with one heavy arm. Though the entire shape of the galaxy is distorted. The arm also has at the southern end a short linear "thumb" sticking out to the east. Really odd. The overall distortion of the disk portion points to the fuzzy white object. Putting all this together it appears quite possible the white fuzzball is the core of something it is digesting after having stripped many of its outer stars away. Though this is only conjecture on my part. No one has studied this galaxy that I find so until then speculation is about all I have to go on.

With a field so deep in the Zone of Avoidance, only two other galaxies in the field have redshift data. The near edge on galaxy at the top center of the image is 2MFGC 15552 or PGC 064812 for those telling me to use the PGC catalog. I prefer the 2MFGC because it helps describe the galaxy as being a flat edge on galaxy but telescope pointing programs often prefer non-descriptive names. In this case, NED makes no attempt to classify it so the name is all we have to go on. It is also about the same distance at 240 million light-years. That makes it a bit less than 50,000 light-years in length. At the bottom left of the image is PGC 064854 at 260 million light-years. It too is unclassified at NED though appears to be an S0 type galaxy about 60,000 light-years in size.

Many other, mostly severely reddened galaxies can be seen in the image but NED has nothing useful on them, most aren't even listed at NED. Though some galaxies aren't reddened significantly, including the three we have data on. This indicates to me the dust that is reddening these distant galaxies lies more than 250 million light-years beyond our galaxy rather than being due to dust in our galaxy.

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

Related Designations for NGC6922

NGC6926

Galaxy hunting in Aquila is about like hunting polar bear in the Antarctic. Unlike Antarctic polar bears or arctic penguins, there are a few galaxies in Aquila worth looking at if you look long and hard enough to find them. NGC 6926 is one such galaxy. It is a huge rather disrupted spiral galaxy some 150,000 light years tall if you count the short plume to the north and 130,000 if you don't. Either way, it is a very large spiral. Its northern arm is drawn out and has two major star clouds in it. The southern is so disrupted it has a hole in the middle of it. It is part of a group of galaxies. Two others in the group are in my image, NGC 6929, a peculiar SA0+ galaxy to its east and UGC 11585 in the southwest corner of my image which is also listed as a peculiar galaxy. The status of NGC 6929 as peculiar is a bit questionable as indicated by the colon in the "pec:" designation. UGC 11585, however, has no question about its peculiarity. Like NGC 6929 it has an apparent hole in its disk. It looks like I overprocessed it so the field star developed the dreaded "Panda Eye" dark circle. But the dark area is real. An ordinary looking edge on dwarf disk galaxy, 6dF J2032205-020828 may also be a member of the group.

NGC 2926 was discovered by William Herschel on July 21, 1784. It isn't in either H400 program. NGC 2629 was found by John Herschel on July 21, 1827.

There's a trio of galaxies at the bottom center of the image that are all about 720 million light-years away which may be part of another galaxy group.

A distant member of the group, NGC 6922, lies far west out of my image. It too is peculiar. It's quite unusual to have a group so full of galaxies carrying the peculiar designation. Due to weather, I was unable to capture NGC 2922 this year. Maybe next year. (Edit: It has now in my collection.)

The field seems to have some faint nebulosity in it. I see a hint of it in the blue POSS 1 plate so think it real. I had a light leak in my system that started with the previous image at the end of July. I didn't look at the images until August 8 when I found it was there and fixed it. I don't think it the cause of the faint glow as it caused other issues. Unfortunately, I took 6 objects before realizing it was there. None show this glow, however. another reason to think it real. Thus I left it in.

The field is little studied being deep in the Zone of Avoidance. Thus the annotated image has only the galaxies mentioned above as none of the many others in the image has much info at NED. Most aren't even listed there, only those few that were strong IR sources to make the 2 micron sky survey are listed. Since they are identified by position only I didn't include them.

For a change I had normal transparency but seeing was running nearly 4". I applied a lot of deconvolution to get it down to near 3". Far more than I like to use. Still, for this year it's a good image, as conditions have been so poor.

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

Related Designations for NGC6926

NGC6928

NGC 6928/2MFGC 15597 is a flat galaxy in the tail of Delphinus, about 190 to 200 million light-years distant. It anchors a small group of galaxies known as the NGC 6928 group. It makes the 2 micron flat galaxy catalog but not the more demanding Flat Galaxy Catalog. Probably not being seen edge on, determining if it meets those more stringent requirements is impossible. In my image I get the distinct impression the core is depressed, that is thinner than the dust lanes in front of it as if hiding behind them. If real it likely would appear very thin and without a core seen edge on. It was discovered by Albert Marth on August 15, 1863. Then on September 23, 1888 Lewis Swift found it. His discovery became IC 1325.

NGC 6930 to the southeast is another member at the same distance. It has a very close companion that too made the 2 Micron Flat Galaxy Catalog. How I can't fathom. It doesn't appear flat to me and is classed as a compact spiral though I see no spiral structure. It does have some interesting dust and seems distorted. Could it be interaction with NGC 6930? If so I found nothing in the literature on it. It does have an AGN in its core meaning its black hole is well fed. This could, but doesn't have to, mean it is interacting. Though NGC 6930 seems pretty undisturbed by the whole affair though it appears its northern end may be hiding behind this little galaxy. There's a star just east of its core making it hard to decipher what's going on. Albert Marth and Lewis Swift repeated their NGC 6828 duplication efforts finding this one the same nights. Swift's duplicate became IC 1326.

The third NGC galaxy in the image is the mostly featureless NGC 6927 also at the same redshift as the first three. It lies to the west-southwest of NGC 6928. Below it is NGC 6927A. A companion maybe but certainly doesn't appear to be interacting. Its redshift is the only one of the group that is even slightly different putting it about 190 million light-years distant rather than 200 million like the others. It is also the smallest. Albert Marth found NGC 6927 the same night as the other two but this time Swift didn't duplicate his efforts.

Several other galaxies are nearby such as the one directly below NGC 6928 that is unlabeled on the annotated image. It's not labeled because it isn't even listed in NED. Southeast of NGC 6930 is the 2MASS galaxy 2MASX J20330454+0951338 which is just its J2000 coordinates. This means it is pouring out a lot of deep infrared light but nothing else is known at NED, not even a magnitude. It appears to be a tight spiral to my eye but again NED doesn't attempt to classify it. Most of the faint galaxies in the image are not in NED but for a handful of IR rich galaxies that made the 2 Micron catalog. The only one with redshift data is another from the 2 Micron Flat galaxy catalog, 2MFGC 15581 in the upper right corner of my image. It doesn't appear all that flat to me but it made the cut. NPM1G +09.0506 to the southeast is also in the 2 MASS catalog but also made the Link Northern Proper Motion program so tired of long 2MASS names I used the NPM1G entry instead but it too is strong in IR light.

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

Related Designations for NGC6928

NGC6934

NGC 6934 is a rather distant globular cluster in Delphinus about 50,000 light-years from us and 42,000 light-years from the core of the galaxy so it is near the edge if the old 100,000 light-year diameter is used. A drizzle of stars have been detected further out making its diameter about 200,000 light-years but if viewed from afar that faint halo would be hard to detect. Many galaxies would appear much larger in super deep images like what would be needed to show our extended disk. So for most purposes, the older diameter seems reasonable though maybe 125,000 would be a better estimate. Hard to tell from the inside looking out.

It was discovered by William Herschel on September 24, 1785. It is in the original H400 program. My entry with my 10" f/t at 180 to 300 power on a good night reads, "Medium-sized globular with a suddenly bright inner core. Surrounded by a large but very faint halo. Inner core looks grainy but no clear resolution even at 300x. No resolution at all to the outer halo." This lack of resolution to the edge is odd as usually if a globular is grainy in the center the edges show a few stars. Not this one it would appear.

Thanks to the power of a CCD it can be easily resolved from the outer edge to the very core. As I remember my film image of this one the core was an overexposed blob but the edges showed some stars. The CCD blows film images of this one away. At least for me.

The night was much better than normal when this was taken allowing me to take and display this one at my full resolution of 0.5" per pixel. A very rare occurrence. Unfortunately, it is getting even rarer as the weather here is slowly getting worse. Global warming to blame or just a long-term trend that will reverse if I live long enough?

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10'x1, RGB=2x10'x2, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6934

NGC6951

NGC 6951 is a nice spiral galaxy seen through a veil of galactic cirrus often called IFN for integrated flux nebula. It is dust out of the plane of our galaxy being illuminated and caused to glow by the integrated light of our galaxy rather than one star it is lit by billions of stars. It is very faint and wasn't all that well known until recently. While a few brighter patches carry common names, usually for what they look like, most is unnamed as is the case with the IFN haze across this image of NGC 6951. Many images of it either didn't catch the IFN or it was processed out. I almost did the latter thinking bad flats were to blame until I found a few images showing the IFN. My exposure time is way too short to show it very well, unfortunately

NGC 6951 also known as NGC 6952. It is located in western Cepheus. Redshift puts it at 58 million light-years away but non-redshift measurements say 75 million light-years. Various sources site one or the other but I can't find any better distance for it. It was discovered by Jérôme Coggia in 1877, actual date unknown. That resulted in the NGC 6952 entry. Then NGC 6851 was discovered by Lewis Swift a year later. Again no precise date is known.

It is classified as SAB(rs)bc; LINER Sy2. Being a nearby Seyfert 2 core galaxy it is much studied. Though none seem to find the two straight dust lanes leading to the "top" and "bottom" of the core odd. Usually, the dust lanes down the bar of a barred galaxy are in the center of the bar and go directly in toward the center of the core not tangent to it as these are. I only know of one other galaxy with this type bar structure, NGC 1097. It is at 30 degrees south declination so I can't image it. Just that I see the dust lanes in the POSS I blue plate. They appear much weaker than in NGC 6951.

The image is a reprocessed version from 2008 data starting with the 16 bit TIFF file as the raw data is on drives in the fire safe in the basement or safe deposit box and not easily available. I really need to start from scratch to better bring out the IFN.

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

Related Designations for NGC6951

NGC6956

LDCE 1416/KTG 71 is a triple galaxy system about 200 million light-years distant located in central Delphinus. The three members are NGC 6956/UGC 11619, UGC 11620 and UGC 11623.

NGC 6956 was discovered by William Herschel on October 19, 1784 though it isn't in either Herschel 400 observing list. It is classified as SBb. It's two arms are quite unsymmetrical. It appears to have many star clusters along is arms. It is quite large at about 90,000 light-years in diameter.

UGC 11620 is classified as Sb. It appears to be a red spiral indicating star formation has mostly ended for this galaxy. UGC 11623 is classified as SB(r)a. All have redshift values that indicate these are the same distance and thus a related group.

The field is in the Zone of Avoidance" so poorly studied. All objects NED lists as galaxies are shown in the annotated image. Obviously, there are many more galaxies in the image. Some of these are listed as UvS objects (Ultraviolet sources) rather than galaxies. The position of these is approximate. Most NED lists are just stars. Within a 20 minute radius of NGC 6956 NED lists over 1000 UvS objects. I didn't bother to annotate those that are galaxies. Sorting out stars from galaxies would take many hours I don't have to spare.

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

Related Designations for NGC6956