NGC7296

NGC 7296 is a small open cluster, in Lacerta, almost lost in the background of the Milky Way. It was on my list as a Herschel 400 object. I take those when nothing better is within my meridian limits. Even visually I found it rather lost in the Milky Way. My Herschel 400 entry, made June 14, 1985, reads: "Small cluster, nearly drown out by a very rich Milky Way. Where does the writer come up with the '2 degrees east of Beta' (statement) when it's less than 1 degree east?" I went on about this error as I was pointing 2 degrees east and seeing nothing until I realized that position didn't match the given coordinates. When I used the coordinates it was easy to find. Apparently, I wasn't happy with the time it cost me looking the wrong place for it.

Herschel recorded this one twice it appears, once with wrong coordinates. Thus it carries two NGC numbers 7295 and 7296. However, Seligman has a different idea. He says NGC 7296 was William's discovery on October 14, 1787 but says 7295 was found by John on November 8, 1831. Seligman makes no comment about a second William observation of it. Oddly SIMBAD doesn't list an entry for 7295. When the POSS server uses NGC 7295 when you ask for NGC 7296 but points a couple minutes south of the correct position.

I found little on this object. WEBDA indicates it is about 9550 light-years distant and very young at an age of about 100 million years. The Sky lists the bright orange star in the cluster as being only 153 light-years distant so not a cluster member. The Sky didn't list distances to any other stars in the area of the cluster.

NED does list a few galaxies in the area but without distance data. I've shown those it listed in the reduced annotated image.

My blue data was severely hurt by haze that cleared for the other colors. I had to compensate with a far larger factor than I normally would use. Color is therefore somewhat suspect.

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

Related Designations for NGC7296

NGC7303

NGC 7303 is a very strange galaxy in northwestern Pegasus about 150 million light-years distant by redshift, 160 million by the median of Tully Fisher measurements. It is a LINER galaxy so has a very active nucleus. If the strange shape and all the activity is due to an interaction it is something it ate as it has no companions in its area that NED came up with. Though this area is not well represented in any database I have. It is very spider or crab looking which reminds me of a Shadow ship from the Babylon 5 SciFi series. NED lists it as S? while the NGC project says it is Sbc. It was discovered by Guillaume Bigourdan on August 24, 1884.

The only other galaxy in the field with redshift distance is the very open, two arm spiral UGC 12071. It is over a half billion light-years distant so unrelated to NGC 7303. Its color is strange with sharply defined reddish areas that change to blue without apparent reason. Makes the color look splotchy. As there's no hint of color issues any other place in the image I have to think it really is this way. At least until I can find skies suitable for retaking the color. Maybe next year.

The only other NGC listing in the field is for NGC 7304 which is considered as nonexistent by the NGC project. Even its "discoverer", Heinrich d'Arrest, was unable to find it again. Some say it is the nearby group of stars but the NGC project says those are invisible in scopes even larger than that used to "discover" it in the first place. The UGC says "Reinmuth identifies NGC 7304 with a star 3' north following this galaxy." That would likely be the brightest of the stars near the position shown in my annotated image though NED itself says "Three galactic stars. NGC identification is very uncertain."

Only 5 other galaxies are noted in NED. All from the 2MASS survey and none with much information let alone redshift data or magnitude estimates. I've labeled them in the annotated image for what that is worth. One looks like a star in my image. It even looks like a star to me in the Sloan image. NED lists it both as a star and as a galaxy. Many other galaxies, some interesting looking, are seen in the field but I was unable to turn up anything on them as interesting as their appearance.

Transparency was poor and I kept trying over and over for usable luminance frames having grabbed color data on a night of poor seeing but sort of usable transparency. In all, I took some 16 luminance frames. Three were so poor I threw them out. But by including the rest I got better results than sorting further. Though if I used the four sharpest there was more detail in bright areas but fainter regions were totally lost. Using only the lesser images picked up faint regions but lost the detail. Best was use them all and miss the finest detail so that's what you get. This one is so interesting looking it deserves better.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=13x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC7303

NGC7309

NGC 7309 is another galaxy Arp could have included in his Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. One of his categories is 3 armed spirals. He just included 3, only one being NGC 145 the others being fainter, smaller and difficult to see in detail. To me, none are as well qualified as NGC 7309 for this category. Why he chose to omit it yet include the others I don't know. NGC 7309 is located in Aquarius and is about 170 million light-years distant. It is a very nice face on barred spiral. Two arms come off the short bar with the third pretty much on its own. A spur seems to come off near its southern end. It was discovered by William Herschel on November 28, 1785. It isn't in either of the H400 projects.

Being near the zone of avoidance the field hasn't been studied very well. Only four galaxies have redshift data available plus one rather nearby quasar. None of these other galaxies have been classified. There are many other galaxies in the field, just that they haven't been studied very much. I'd not have bothered with such a sparse annotated image but for the 5 asteroids in the image. Details are in the annotated image.

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

Related Designations for NGC7309

NGC7311

NGC 7311 and 7312 are two spiral galaxies seen against the distant galaxy cluster, Abell 2454. The field is "above" the neck of Pegasus the horse that flies upside down in our northern skies. The cluster is about 2 billion light-years distant while the two galaxies are much closer and unrelated to each other. NGC 7311 a blue spiral is only 190 million light-years distant while NGC 7312 is about twice as distant at 360 million light-years by redshift and 440 million light-years by Tully-Fisher measurement. Both appear about the same size in my image but due to distance differences that is only an illusion. I measure NGC 7311 as being about 100,000 light-years across and NGC 7312 as being 163,000 to 200,000 light-years across depending on which distance you use.

NGC 7311 was discovered by William Herschel on August 30, 1785. It isn't in either Herschel 400 observing program. NGC 7312 was discovered 76 years later by Albert Marth on October 30, 1863. A near Halloween galaxy. It is appropriately rather orange in color compared to NGC 7311.

Only a handful of galaxies in the Abell 2454 galaxy cluster had redshift data. All had only coordinate based names which I omitted as anyone can plate solve my image and get their coordinates if need be. All but one in the very lower right corner appear to be members of the Abell cluster. Are all those without distance data also members of the cluster? Abell didn't so much worry about distance. He assumed that those within a couple magnitudes of the third brightest galaxy he saw as a cluster were members. NED lists it as being some 20 minutes of arc across. With the center being toward the top of my 22 minute high frame I assume I caught all at the south end of the cluster but am missing many north of my image. In fact, NED lists several members out of my frame to the north. It is listed as morphology class III meaning it has no central galaxy or galaxies which is obvious with nothing around its core position which is just left of the label in my annotated image. It is a class II cluster. By Abell's system that means it contains 50 to 79 members that meet the brightness limits mentioned above.

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

Related Designations for NGC7311

NGC7321

NGC 7321 is a barred spiral in which the two arms that come off the bar appear to form a bright ring. Look closely and you can see the ring ends are slightly further from the core when the meet the start of the ring from the other bar. Often there's little beyond a ring of this type but that's not true with this galaxy. There are arms well beyond the ring. They may come off the inner ring though some sources say they don't. I'm leaning toward the idea they don't come from the ring but you be the judge. The galaxy was discovered by William Herschel on November 17, 1784. It isn't in either of the first two Herschel 400 programs.

NED has issues with this field. When I searched for galaxies with redshift data in the image it returned only NGC 7321 and nothing else. I then asked for anything with a redshift value in the image and it came up with many. I've never seen a glitch like this but sometimes when it returns nothing but the galaxy I'm imaging I rarely look further. Why I did this time I don't know. The galaxies it did list once I removed the search rules are all very distant. None had a magnitude, all have verified spectroscopic redshift values, the "s" in the annotation. Most were 5 billion light-years distant or more. One listed as a galaxy appears to really be a quasar. I've annotated it as G? as I doubt I could see any galaxy at over 10 billion light-years. Also, it appears to be a point source in my image without any hint of galactic "fuzz". It is southwest of NGC 7321. To the northwest of NGC 7321 is another object at about 11 billion light-years. NED identifies it one place as a quasar and another as an ultraviolet source. Quasars are often bright in ultraviolet light but the UvS designation would indicate there's some question about it. There are several rather bright galaxies in the field that may be related to NGC 7321 but none had redshift data. Some of the fainter ones aren't listed in NED at all much to my surprise when it covers far fainter ones. The few I could identify are included but without redshift data as that wasn't available.

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

Related Designations for NGC7321

NGC7331

The Deer Lick Group is anchored by NGC 7331. Normally I show my shots with north up. The disk of the main galaxy NGC 7331 is strongly warped. Seen with north up this warp wasn't as obvious as it is rotated with east up. Our minds prefer to see spiral galaxies flat like a plate rather than on end. So I gave in and rotated it. The main galaxy is NGC 7331. But there's no end of confusion to the NGC objects around this guy. Some sources consider NGC 7325 and 7326 as two double stars below (west) of NGC 7331 and NGC 7327 the elliptical galaxy straight below the right edge of NGC 7331. It is almost hidden by a bright star below it. Other sources consider this to be NGC 7325 with NGC 7326 being the spiral down and to the right of it. But then these sources consider 7327 to be the same object as 7325! There are yet other ways of assigning these three NGC numbers. Now that's confusing. And you thought astronomers had all this figured out.

Things get a bit better with the galaxies above (east) of NGC 7331. From left to right just above the galaxy we have 3 bright and one tiny galaxy all with NGC numbers. First is NGC 7337 a spiral found by George Stoney on September 10, 1849. Next is the pair of stars, NGC 7338 Wilhelm Temple saw as a galaxy in 1882. Next is NGC 7335, a tightly wound spiral somewhat smaller than much looser NGC 7337. William Herschel found it on September 13, 1784. It's not in either H400 program. The even smaller spiral to the right is NGC 7336. It was seen by George Stoney on September 10, 1849. In this group is NGC 7333 but it is only a tight double star, Herman Schultz saw as a galaxy in 1865, so I'll not point it out. Above all this in my photo (further east) is NGC 7340 an elliptical also found by George Stoney on September 10, 1849. It is somewhat above NGC 7337. While SEDS puts the distance at 46 million light-years most now say it is 49 million light-years away based on Hubble Cepheid data. The galaxy may look like a large spiral. It is a spiral, of course, but not large being only about 30,000 light-years across. Ours is a bit over 100,000 light-years across. So it isn't as big as it looks. Below NGC 7331 are two double stars visual astronomers took to be galaxies; NGC 7325 by Herman Schultz on September 20, 1865 and NGC 7326 by Lord Rosse himself on October 7, 1874.

So what warped the disk of this galaxy? Good question. While these other galaxies appear close they aren't. NGC 7335, 37 and 40 are about 240 million light years away! NGC 7336 is 375 million light years away! All far to far away to have caused the warp. The two galaxies below it are also over 300 million light-years away so not involved.

The galaxy was discovered by William Herschel on September 5, 1784 and is in the original Herschel 400 observing program. My notes on it with my 10" f/5 pm an average night at powers up to 180x reads: "5'x2' in size. At 180 long and faint. Outer arms become evident at this power. Galaxy appears a bit rounder than the 5x2 size given. I'd put it at 10'x3' (it is 11x3.7 in my image). Dust lane on west side was easy at all powers. A fine object that grows as you study it."

The flare at the lower right is due to a bright star just out of the field of view.

Edit: This is one of my first images. Either the night was really bad or I didn't get it in focus -- or both. It is in dire need of being retaken. I added an annotated version that just lists the galaxies mentioned in the above text and not the many others in the image.

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

Related Designations for NGC7331

NGC7332

NGC 7332 and 7339 are a pair of very different galaxies in Pegasus about 40 million light-years away. NGC 7332 is classed as S0 pec by NED and S0 by the NGC project. NED gives it the peculiar label due to its boxy (some say peanut shaped) core. Except for this odd core, it is a very white featureless edge on spiral mostly devoid of dust and apparently, gas as one note indicates no HII emission is seen coming from the galaxy.

Its companion in space is NGC 7339. It is classed by NED as SAB(s)bc:? and simply Sb-c by the NGC Project. While redshift shows the distance to these two to differ by some 6 million light-years it is most likely they are much closer than that to each other though not interacting nor does it appear they have ever been interacting.

Both galaxies were found by William Herschel on September 19, 1784. NGC 7332 is in the second H400 project. NGC 7339 isn't in either project.

Assuming the distance to both is 40 million light-years, NGC 7332 is a bit less than 48,000 light-years across as seen from our perspective and NGC 7339 a bit smaller at about 42,000 light-years. Rather average size galaxies.

According to NED, there are two other galaxies in the image that are likely members of the group. One is on the far right side of the image and has a redshift putting it about 50 million light-years distant. Even if it isn't a member and is 50 million light-years distant it is a dwarf with a diameter of under 9500 light-years. It is the radio galaxy AGES J223627+234258. AGES is the Arecibo Galaxy Environment Survey in case you were wondering.

The other possible member is an enigma. It is the radio galaxy AGES J223829+235135 to the east (left) of NGC 7339. I've marked it as G 0.049? The annotation is beside what looks like an orange star with a galaxy below it. NED gives a position error of up to 25 seconds of arc centered almost precisely on the orange object. But at 49 million light-years it is only 1000 light-years across. It's very odd for a dwarf galaxy to be that bright, orange and small. Hence the question mark. Even the obvious galaxy below it is only about 2000 light-years across if 49,000 light-years distant. At least it is more typical of a dwarf galaxy but still seems too bright for those that size about our galaxy at least. I can't find any answers to this problem. Still, this small blue blob is the best candidate and is well within the error bars.

Below it is another galaxy with a problem, AGES J223839+234247 at 380 million light-years. Its position is that of a star precisely. The error bar is only a half second of arc for this one and it lands right on the star not the galaxy above it. If the galaxy above the star the one in the catalog it is over 10 times the error bar from the noted position. Still, it's the only galaxy in the area. It too earned a question mark. At 380 million light-years it is a more reasonable 30,000 light-years across.

The only other galaxy in the field with redshift data is at the far left, AGES J223846+234923, also at 380 million light-years and also very blue. It measures out to about 36,000 light-years across. Finally, one that makes sense.

Below (south) NGC 7339 is a quasar at 8.6 billion light-years a z of 1.24 for those wishing to make their own distance calculation rather than NED's 5 year WMAP calculation of light travel time that I used.

Unfortunately, the image suffers from the bad seeing and poor transparency I had much of the last 15+ months.

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

Related Designations for NGC7332

NGC7342

The WBL685 galaxy group is one name for some of these galaxies. Another is the USGC U820 galaxy group or the PPS2 004 galaxy group or the CGCG 514-081 galaxy group or the LDCE 1532 galaxy group or the B2 2236+35:[MLO2002] CLUSTER galaxy cluster. Problem is none seem to include all the galaxies. The last one as a galaxy cluster comes the closest but that name doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. So I'm calling it the NGC 7342-NGC 7345 group as those are the two NGC galaxies in the field. This field is located in Pegasus a bit over a degree north of the far more well known NGC 7331 "Dear Lick Galaxy". In fact, the very top of my field is in Lacerta. Redshift puts the galaxies all about 330 to 400 million light-years distant. This may indicate there are two groups here or more likely just that their relative velocities about a common center of gravity are to blame with the true distance somewhat in the middle.

All the galaxies appear rather red indicating this group has likely interacted sufficiently to strip most of the star-forming dust and gas from them leaving even the spirals red and dead. NGC 7342 is a face on spiral that shows hints of some faint blue areas indicating star formation went on until a few billion years ago. NED classifies it as SBa and 350 million light-years distant. The NGC Project agrees though Seligman adds a question mark.

The other NGC galaxy NGC 7345 has a redshift that puts it most distant at 410 million light-years but one source disagrees and says 340 million light-years. NED and the NGC Project classify this edge on spiral as Sa while Seligman again adds a question mark. This galaxy was also found by Édouard Stephan apparently the same time as NGC 7342. Both galaxies were discovered by Édouard Stephan on September 11, 1872.

For determining sizes to these galaxies I'm going to assume all are at 350 million light-years about a median value for the galaxies in this image with redshift data. Using that NGC 7342 and NGC 7345 are giant spirals at 140,000 light-years. NGC 7345 is even larger if its larger redshift is accurate which I doubt. Assuming all these galaxies are at about the same distance their relative sizes is obvious from the image so I won't compute sizes for the rest.

Of the other galaxies, UGC 12127 and MCG+06-49-060 seem to share a common faint halo. While they look like normal elliptical or spherical galaxies the common halo indicates they are pulling stars from each other. Thus the common halo that appears to surround both is some 270,000 light-years across. Thus this is the largest system in the group. What details I found are listed in the annotated image.

Shortly before I took this image I had the camera off the scope to clean a nasty dust mot from the L filter that was so large it wouldn't flat out. In putting the camera back on I managed to screw up and leave a light leak that put a very steep and strong gradient across the image with a sharp shadow at one edge. Due to the sharp edge, even Gradient eXterminator couldn't fully handle it. Since this was too far west by the time I found the problem I spent many hours trying to recreate the light leak and make a flat to compensate. I finally managed to do so. Then I fixed the light leak. It only happened with a particular orientation of the scope where the blue LED of the Paramount hit the camera just right. Why Software Bisque put a bright blue light on the mount (seen only when using USB port as it is inside and covered by a panel if the serial port is used) I can't fathom. I had duct tape over it but apparently, that came off so it was a combination of errors that created the issue. BTW I found a good use of a cloudy sky. By pointing the scope where this field was when taken on a cloudy night I was able to make a flat that reproduced the gradient. I had to hit the times exactly the same. Fortunately, the pointing accuracy of the mount is within about 10 seconds of arc so by setting the date and time to match and overriding all the screams of The Sky that I shouldn't do that was I able to make the needed flat to compensate. Finally, a useful series of images was taken on a cloudy night! What I won't do to save an image.

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

Related Designations for NGC7342

NGC7348

NGC 7348 is a rather ratty looking galaxy in the neck of Pegasus about 300 to 320 million light-years distant. It is an ultraviolet excess galaxy though I found no studies on why that is the case. Most often it is due to interaction with another galaxy which could explain its rather ratty shape. It is classified as Scd: by NED, Sc by the NGC project and SBc? by Seligman. It was discovered by Albert Marth on August 7, 1864.

In the lower right corner of the image is UGC 12134 a more normal looking spiral also at about 320 million light-years. Now the confusion begins. A note at NED says of it "Not NGC 7353 which is a star." Simbad, however, says it is NGC 7353. Seligman and NED itself say NGC 7353 is a galaxy several minutes of right ascension left of my image. Poss plates certainly show a galaxy at that position. Seligman credits its discovery to Marth yet somehow Marth missed UGC 12134 according to most sources. For now, I'm labeling it with the UGC entry. NED classifies it as Sbc. Other than confusion over its identity I found little on this galaxy.

But there is a real NGC object in the image. NGC 7350 in the upper left corner. Unfortunately, it is just a double star. A third star between the two might have helped to make it look fuzzy to Albert Marth who found it that same August 7th night.

Being in the Zone of Avoidance galaxies in this image are poorly studied. I listed the only ones NED listed but they have no redshift data. Quite a few weren't listed at all. The Deep Survey Field covers this image but its galaxies are mostly well below 24th magnitude so I didn't try to find what few were visible.

14" LX200R @ f/10. L=4x10' RG=2x10' B=4x10' (due to a filter mix-up)

Related Designations for NGC7348

NGC7385

NGC 7385 is the largest and brightest member of the ZwCl 2247.3+1107 galaxy cluster. This cluster has 162 members over a field 2.3 degrees across that is centered about 5 minutes below the bottom of my image. Yet the major NGC galaxies are located north of the center so that's where I pointed the scope. Zwicky put the cluster in his "Open" category. This means it has no defined center and galaxies are rather evenly scattered showing no grouping toward the center.

I've listed the classification of the individual galaxies if any was given along with the redshift distance in billions of light-years in the annotated image. The one asteroid in the image is detailed in the image as well. Some galaxies are interesting so I'll cover what I found interesting about them.

NGC 7385 is not only the biggest and brightest galaxy in the group it is the most disturbed as well. There is an obvious stream of something going southwest from the galaxy toward PGC 069819 then angling northwest to a point just northeast of NGC 7383 where it turns nearly straight north. It is faint but you should see it. Maxing out the contrast of the Red POSS 2 plate shows it clearly as well. I was thinking it likely IFN which is seen in parts of Pegasus but then found a note to NGC 7385 at NED that said: "Huge radio source extending southwest..." That appears to match this feature indicating it really is a plume. It was discovered by William Herschel on October 18, 1784 but isn't in either H400 program.

This brings me to NGC 7383. A note at NED says it is a non-interacting companion to NGC 7385. What caused the plume. Could NGC 7385 be involved after all or is the plume due to something it ate? It's eastern arm on the side toward NGC 7385 and the plume is longer and more disturbed look than the one on the western side. Could there be a connection to all this? I'm not ready to be certain there's no interaction, just that it may be unlikely. It was discovered by Bindon Stoney on November 27, 1850.

NGC 7386 to the north of NGC 7385 is the second largest galaxy in the cluster. A note at NED says it is a non-interacting companion to NGC 7385. But again, I'm not quite ready to say that's the case. There is a faint stream of material between the two. Fainter than the southwest plume but again visible on the POSS II plate. While the redshift of NGC 7383 and NGC 7385 are virtually the same as that of NGC 7386 is a bit different. NGC 7386 was discovered by William Hershel when he found NGC 7385. It isn't in either H400 program either.

The plumes of NGC 7385 may be due to some galaxy it digested in the past and have nothing to do with these other two galaxies which just happen to be in the path of what it was that NGC 7385 ate. The sudden turn of the plume could be from the galaxy passing by, slowing down and being pulled back to make its final plunge into NGC 7385. I consider this more likely than the other two NGC galaxies being involved but I'd like to see deeper photos of the plume. That might decide the issue.

Another galaxy pair is MCG+02-58-023. The northern member of the pair is NGC 7387. NED has a redshift for NGC 7383 of 7118 for a time travel of 310 million years. NED also lists a redshift for the pair under the MCG+02-58-023 designation of 7756 for a light travel time of 340 million years. I can't explain the discrepancy so have put both measurements on the image under the NGC 7387 label.

One more thing about NGC 7385. Several cD galaxies in major clusters I've image (M49 is an example) have blue galaxies that appear like a bug splat on the "front" of the galaxy. NGC 7385 has one as well on the northeast side. In the case of the others, I've imaged the blue galaxy was a dwarf member of the cluster and well studied. That isn't necessarily the case here. It isn't listed in NED at all! So I have no idea if it too is a dwarf member of the group or a distant background galaxy. I prefer the former but without any data can't back that up in any way other than blue galaxies like it are rarely seen by my scope at distances much greater than that of this cluster. Also, the blue color may indicate interaction with NGC 7385. It is remotely possible it is destined for its next meal or not. There's no way to know with what little information is currently available.

Also in the image are NGC 7387 found by R.J. Mitchel on September 9, 1856; and NGC 7389 and NGC 7380, both found by Bindon Stoney on November 27, 1850.

While there are a lot of faint and not so faint galaxies in the image not found at NED I've listed all with redshift data. Another 10 or so are listed without redshift data with the vast majority not listed at all. This is an area of the sky close enough to the exclusion zone that even though it is well populated most surveys have ignored the area. A few more are listed in The Sky under extended PGC labels that NED is yet to pick up. I didn't list them since you can't go to NED or SIMBAD and look them up nor does The Sky database have redshift data.

This would be a good area for those with a larger field of view than mine to look into that are interested in galaxy clusters.

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

Related Designations for NGC7385