PGC036506

NGC 3846A/UGC 06706 is a low surface brightness blue galaxy located in the bowl of the big dipper about 2 degrees northwest of Phecda at a redshift indicating a distance of about 74 million light-years. A single non-redshift measurement says 82 million light-years. It is classified as SB(r)m: and I measure its longest dimension at 53,000 light-years including the huge plume to the northeast. Without the plumes, it is about half that size. While it is listed as NGC 3846A, NGC 3846 is a full second field north of my frame. I'd not have expected it to be that distant. Also, it is nearly 450,000 light-years distant so 6 times further away. They aren't related in any way.

Also not related is the apparent companion to the west MRK 1452. It is 310 million light-years distant and larger at 75,000 light-years by my measurement. While unrelated it forms a pair known as VV 320. It is a starburst barred spiral classed as SBc. The core is surrounded by what looks to be a "Saturn-like" ring with the arms coming off the ends.

The galaxy or is it galaxies that really interest me are listed at NED only by position in the Sloan survey as SDSS J114339.35+550003.9 and SDSS J114339.95+550000.5. The former forms the head of a "comet" with the latter being a slight brightening in the southern edge of the tail just behind the former galaxy. I can't say if it is really a second galaxy or a faint star cloud in the tail. Is ASK 237743.0 involved? It is a Broad Line AGN which indicates its black hole is actively feeding. This could have been triggered with interaction with the other galaxy but with no redshift data for the "comet", there's no way to know. Certainly, a dense galaxy like ASK 237743.0 could tear apart a loose spiral creating a mess without much harm to itself so I suspect its possible though if the brightening behind the "head" is a second galaxy they could have torn each other apart to make the comet without help from the other galaxy. I don't expect this to be studied for some time.

I had a heck of a time capturing this one. A bright star off the right-hand side was sending all sorts of nasty ghosts into the frame. Whenever I put NGC 3846A anywhere near the center those ghosts ruined things. Normally a one minute move solves these but solve one and two cropped up. I felt like I was fighting Hydra. Finally, this low position worked. That almost cost me the comet-like galaxy. I've had much brighter stars out of frame that caused far fewer problems. I don't know why this one was such a pain to deal with.

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

Related Designations for PGC036506

PGC045372

UGC 8201/PGC 045372 is a Magellanic irregular dwarf galaxy that belongs to the M81 galaxy group. Measurements of its distance vary around 15 million light-years. Assuming that distance it is about 21,000 light-years across its longest diameter. It is very blue indicating its stars are quite young, yet it seems to contain little gas and dust from which it could make stars. This is a rather common problem with blue dwarf galaxies that still hasn't been understood. I see no HII regions in my image. I see some red fuzzy things in the HST image but they look more like reddened distant galaxies rather than HII regions. No Halpha was used for the HST image which was made in near IR and green light. The reason for the image was to determine its distance using the Tip of the Red Branch method. That came out with a distance slightly less than 15 million light-years. You can read more about it here: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1510a/ I see several apparent globular clusters around the galaxy's edges in the HST image at full size.

The field is full of distant galaxies, galaxy clusters, candidate quasars and likely quasars. It also contains one X-ray galaxy that is also visible in ordinary light. It is labeled XG in the annotated image. UvES objects are all candidate quasars with only photographic redshift. While photographic redshift can be a good distance indicator it also can lead to some very incorrect results. Over time I've watched many candidate quasars with large photographic redshifts turn out to just be ordinary stars in our galaxy with odd spectra leading to the erroneous result. So consider these as rather questionable Two candidates are seen through UGC 8201. Though several sources list them as star clusters in the galaxy rather than distant objects. In the HST image, the eastern one looks like a galaxy while the western one is star-like. I consider their status as quasars as circumspect. I marked them anyway.

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

Related Designations for PGC045372

PGC053126

PGC53126 is a ring galaxy in northeastern Virgo about 390 million light-years distant. It is classified as Sab with no mention of the ring that makes it look a lot like Hoag's object. Though there's a hint that the ring is really two spiral arms that do connect to the inner bright area so the ring isn't truly separate from the rest of the galaxy as it is in Hoag's object. I had this one on the to-do list for years but never researched it until now that I had taken it. Turns out there's virtually nothing on it, unlike Hoag's object. Very frustrating. I measure its size at 92,000 light-years.

Conditions were poor as they have been what few nights this spring I could even attempt to take data. I'm rather suspect of the color data as haze layers were coming and going that caused eXcalibrator to really have to adjust color balance far more than I've ever pushed it. Green, the least needed color seemed rather unhurt by the haze while the other colors were very weak in comparison.

When I centered on PGC 53126 I saw NGC 5775 and 5774 off the frame to the east so moved the center west to move them into the field. But I failed to realize that I also needed to move south a bit to catch all of NGC 5774. At least I caught the two IC galaxies in the bottom part of the image. These galaxies are rather normal looking. It's IC 1070 below the two NGC galaxies that looks a lot like an exclamation point without the lower dot. it is likely a member of the same group as the two NGC galaxies, just much smaller at only a bit under 20,000 light-years in length. NGC 5774 is almost 100,000 light-years across thanks to hits faint drawn out arm on the east side. This is likely due to interaction with NGC 5775 which appears a much more massive galaxy thus less disturbed by their interaction. It is only slightly larger in diameter (at least what we can see of it) at just over 100,000 light-years.

NGC 5774 was discovered by Bindon Stoney on April 26, 1851. The much brighter NGC 5775 was discovered 65 years earlier by William Herschel on May 27, 1786. It is in the second Herschel 400 observing program. Unfortunately, my notes from that got lost in our move to Minnesota nor did I log it otherwise.

IC 1066 and IC 1067 have a redshift similar to the two NGC galaxies so are likely part of the same group. I measure 1066 at about 34,000 light-years in size with 1067 being 53,000 light-years across. They were discovered by Stephane Javelle on May 28, 1891.

There are many very distant galaxies in the image but due to lousy transparency many are just so faint I didn't try to annotate them. Picking up only those brighter than 21st. magnitude. Under good transparent skies, I can easily point out galaxies a full magnitude fainter. I did label an Emission Line Galaxy that barely shows in the TIFF version but is very difficult in the lossy compression of the JPG image. It is right at 22 magnitude with a redshift of 7.7 billion light-years look back time.

There are several star-like objects labeled as UvES which stands for Ultraviolet Excess Source. These are candidate quasars with only photographic redshift calculations which can be very wrong. Thus they remain only possibly at extreme distances and thus quasars. Still, I find most that have been fully examined since I started noting such objects, turned out to be real quasars so these too likely will prove real quasars once the full data is obtained.

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

Related Designations for PGC053126

PGC054617

VV 705 also known as PGC 54617 among other designations, is a pair of colliding galaxies in northeastern Bootes about 550 million light-years distant. Both galaxies have bright blue tidal tails. The northern galaxy's tail curves around then across the region where the two are merging to come out the other side a short distance. The tails start bright blue but when they suddenly fade turn slightly red in color. Do these tails represent their path to the train wreck that is happening? Not being able to see the tails in three dimensions it is a bit hard to explain them. Are they similar to those of the Antenna galaxies just seen at a different angle and at a much greater distance? I measure the combination as being about 133,000 light-years across so these aren't very big galaxies made even smaller by their over half billion light-year distance.

Some sources claim it is made up of three galaxies but that is clearly not the case as seen in this HST image: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0810bw/ .

The annotated image shows many very distant faint galaxies but few have redshift data at NED so aren't annotated. There were almost as many galaxy clusters as galaxies listed by redshift at NED. The galaxy anchoring the cluster with 12 members at a photographic redshift of 4.41 billion light-years look back time is listed at NED as being of magnitude 22.0. Not bad for only 40 minutes of luminance data. Many far fainter are visible but not finding many magnitudes listed for the field I don't know how faint it goes. The field was very near my zenith when imaged which helped it go deep by limiting atmospheric extinction to the bare minimum.

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

Related Designations for PGC054617

PGC058049

I Zw 148/PGC 58049 is one messed up piece of galaxy parts in Hercules about 375 million light-years distant. It has three listings in NED. The one for I Zw 148 points to the northern blob of the north south piece yet gives its size as 0.4x0.3 minutes which is the size of the entire object. It then says it is an E2 galaxy. If so it is the first very blue elliptical I've ever seen. This is only the start of the confusion in this image. It is a rather small mess being 36,000 light years north to south and 40,000 light-years east to west. I am measuring it as 22"x20" in size so slightly different than NED's 24"x18".

NED lists the left end of the east-west bar as ASK 254551.0 giving a size that matches the entire length and width of the bar. Fortunately, they make no classification attempt. NED then lists the vertical bar as ASK 255273.0 again without classification but with dimensions that match the near vertical bar and coordinates that point to the bigger blob below the one they use for the coordinates of I Zw 148. All three have similar redshifts that are about 0.375 billion light-years but due to rounding one is 0.38 and the other two 0.37. I had hoped for better seeing. As it was getting to where the moon was setting seeing was great but by the time the moon set seeing had deteriorated. There's a lot more to this object than I captured. So I have included a 0.19" per pixel image from Sloan where all the various pieces can be seen. Zwicky considered this a blue post-eruptive galaxy with compact knots. To me it appears to be two colliding galaxies. The east-west bar one and the north-south mess the other. There may be the start of a polar ring about the vertical segment. This is one I wish the HST would visit. So far it isn't in the public HST database. I Zw 148 is considered a member of the Abell 2199 galaxy cluster which is centered about NGC 6166 1.5 degrees to the southeast. The cluster has a listed diameter of 3 degrees and a distance of 410 million light-years, virtually the same as many galaxies in this field including I Zw 148.

While this mess is confusing enough for one image there's still more confusion. This time about the galaxy to the northeast. NED identifies it as NGC 6138 but does admit the identification is uncertain. SIMBAD and The Sky 6 Pro agree with NED but make no mention about the uncertainty. Yet this is quite likely wrong! The real 6138 is NGC 6363 one hour further east. You can read about this one hour error which was straightened out by Steve Gottlieb. You can read about it at his site http://www.astronomy-mall.com/Adventures.In.Deep.Space/steve.ngc.htm . It really is an Sb spiral that made the 2 micron flat galaxy catalog as 2MFGC 13166. That's how it is identified in my image. I measure it at 140,000 light-years in size assuming the 440 million light-year distance.

While NGC 6138 was a bust there are true NGC galaxies in this field. NGC 6145 is the Sb or Sc spiral (depends on the source) below I Zw 148. It is a bit under 90,000 light-years across. It was discovered by John Herschel on May 12, 1828. NGC 6147 is a small Sb or S spiral (yet again sources vary) discovered by George Stoney on May 26, 1849. It is only 44,000 light-years across. NGC 6146 is a large E or E2 elliptical (again sources vary, NED adds that it is a Passive Elliptical Galaxy, that is it has little or no star formation) discovered by William Herschel on March 18, 1787. It isn't in either Herschel 400 observing list. It is over 200,000 light-years in size so a whopper of a galaxy. It is also involved in some confusion. Some sources identify it as NGC 6141. The real NGC 6141 is in the southwest corner of my image. It has a bright region surrounded by a faint disk but conditions were so poor the night I took this that I failed to pick up that disk. It was discovered by Guillaume Bigourdan on May 27, 1886. It is classified as S?, S?? or S0 again sources vary. Including what faint part of the disk, I picked up it is 81,000 light-years across. The bright region is only 30,000 light-years in its long dimension. All the NGC galaxies carry a redshift value consistent with that of the Abell 2199 galaxy cluster.

While much of the field is filled with Abell 2199 galaxies it also has the usual assortment of random galaxies and quasars as well as distant galaxy clusters. But no asteroids.

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

Related Designations for PGC058049

PGC058135

This field is located in Hercules. It is on the north-northwest edge of Abell 2199 and the south-southwest edge of Abell 2197 galaxy clusters. Both have a distance estimate of about 410 million light-years. This accounts for the majority of the galaxies in the field being at about this distance.

My original target was the pair of galaxies known as NGC 6150. When I checked the field I saw a several other interesting looking galaxies in the field and decided to record the aim point as being PGC 58135 to pick them all up. In the 10 second image I used to check the frame it appeared very strange to me. Turns out I was fooled by a bright star at the north end and a fainter one at the southern end. Unfortunately, these cover some likely interesting detail. While the galaxy looks to have a ring structure I doubt that it is real. It is a barred spiral in which the north arm suddenly bends left. This is hidden by the bright blue star. Then it runs on a tangent to a similar arm coming from the southern end of the bar. This is hidden behind the orange star. The arm then flares outward ending about where I put the label in the annotated image. The southern arm does the same at the northern end of the galaxy, again hidden behind the bright blue star. It then curves on around parallel to the other arm ending just as it reaches the orange star. So it isn't all that odd, just that the stars hiding what's going on give it that appearance.

Redshift puts it a bit more distant than most of the field, at 460 million light-years though two non-redshift measurements using the fundamental plane method put it at only 360 million light-years. I'm a bit lost as to why this method was used. I'd always thought it was designed for elliptical galaxies rather than spiral galaxies. I'm going with the redshift which makes the galaxy about 110,000 light-years in size. A rather large spiral.

NGC 6150 is usually considered only the larger and brighter galaxy with the fainter sometimes identified as NGC 6150B. Their redshifts differ slightly. I see no sign of interaction between them so suspect they actually aren't related other than being in the same Abell cluster. NGC 6150 was discovered by William Herschel on March 18, 1787. It isn't in either Herschel 400 observing projects. NED and the NGC Project classifies it as E? while Seligman says E5?? NED considers it part of Abell 2199 while the NGC Project says it is in Abell 2197. I'll not take sides here as to me it is just one two-lobed cluster, likely a pair of clusters in the early process of merging. I measure NGC 6150 at about 125,000 light-years across while 6150B is a bit under 90,000 light-years across. It was discovered by William Herschel on March 18, 1787. It isn't in either H400 program.

Below NGC 6150 is a truly strange looking galaxy, MRK 881. NED classifies it as an Irregular galaxy with HII emission, likely due to the two obvious blue star clouds on its northwest side. To me, it looks like a disrupted spiral but I can live with the irregular classification. Though I am bothered by its 90,000 light-year size. Irregular galaxies are normally less than half this size. This is in line with a disrupted spiral.

Southwest of PGC 58135 is a very small galaxy that NED labels a Blue Compact Galaxy. It is rather gray in color in my data. The Sloan data which maps blue to near UV shows it very blue. I suspect most of the blue is from UV which is blocked by my filters. I measure it at 13,000 light-years across its longest dimension. NED, however, sees it larger than I do which results in a 20,000 light-year size. Normally NED's sizes are smaller than mine rather than larger so the difference is a puzzle.

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

Related Designations for PGC058135

PGC058928

PGC58928 is a huge galaxy in Draco about 410 million light years distant. I measure its size at about 180,000 light-years. It is classified by NED as SBb. It has two large outer arms that form a nearly perfect ring making it look a bit like Saturn. Northern skies are poorly surveyed as to galaxies. This field is no exception. While there are many background galaxies in the image I found none with distance information or classification. Thus no annotated version was prepared.

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Related Designations for PGC058928

PGC1381773

SDSSCGB 00089, also known as PGC 1381733, is a pair of interacting galaxies about 1.15 billion light-years distant in the constellation of Equuleus. Equuleus is the smallest constellation in the northern hemisphere. Only Crux in the southern hemisphere is smaller. While SDSSCGB 00089 consists of two galaxies it has 4 subentries for this object. Two knots in the southern ring galaxy have their own designations even though they aren't really separate galaxies. I've noted all 4 on the annotated image.

The northern member has a strong core with a plume to the northeast. High resolution SDSS images of it show the plume has a hole in it so it shows elements of being a ring galaxy, just not as obvious as it is for the southern member. Only this northern member has a redshift listed at NED. I assume the southern ring is at virtually the same distance. NED makes no attempt to classify either of these apparent ring galaxies. In case you were wondering SDSSCG stands for Sloan Digital Sky Survey Compact Galaxy (groups). The B means it is from the B catalog of the 6th data release (DR6).

Rings similar to that seen in the southern member are often modeled by direct impacts by a small, very dense, galaxy that acts something like a bullet blowing the target galaxy into a ring. often the core is driven to the ring. Finding nothing on this pair I don't have any idea if this is a likely reason for the way this pair appears.

I can find no notes of how I learned of this pair. It was saved under the designation for the galaxy to the southeast at 920 million light-years rather than its own designation (PGC 1381773). This might be because the other galaxy is in The Sky but this one isn't, allowing me to aim by object rather than coordinates. I have a tendency to mistype coordinates. You don't want to know how many wrong fields I've managed to take due to such typos. So I use a nearby object when the object of interest isn't in the database.

I've prepared an annotated image for this rather barren field. Nothing much of interest is to be found in it, however.

The image was made over two nights. Neither very good. The color data from the first night was totally unusable. The data from the second night barely so. Neither night's luminance data was very good. Seeing was worse the first night but transparency better. While including it hurt resolution somewhat it was necessary to get enough signal to reduce the noise to acceptable levels. This is another that could benefit from a reshoot but considering how poor the field is I doubt it will happen.

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Related Designations for PGC1381773

PGC60230

PGC 60230/CGCG 277-042 is a neat ring galaxy near the head of Draco about 41 million light-years distant by redshift measurement. It may be part of the SDSS-C4-DR3 3375 galaxy cluster which is anchored by NGC 6370, an elliptical galaxy in the upper right of my image below a nasty A2 blue star. Right beside CGCG 277-042 is a very low surface brightness messed up looking blue galaxy ASK 019673. Since rings of the type found here are sometimes considered caused by galaxy collisions I had hoped to find information on this pair. Unfortunately, I found virtually nothing. In fact, there are only 3 papers listed at SIMBAD on CGCG 277-042 and none on the companion. Of the three two are just a catalog entry and another providing better coordinates. The third is a study of this type of ring galaxies to try and find a way to separate those created by collision from other causes. CGCG 277-042 was one in the study but that's all. No findings on it at all other than it likely fits their expected conditions. http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?2010MNRAS.403.1516S&db_key=AST&nosetcookie=1 Both of these could easily have made Arp's Atlas. He had a category for ring galaxies though it contains only 3, none of which have the core in the center. ASK 019673 at first glance looks a lot like Arp 338, the last one in his atlas. Though it is quite likely two superimposed galaxies, one face on and one edge on as both show a golden core which was lost in Arp's black and white image. It is also a red spiral. ASK 019673 looks to be a single galaxy and is very blue. To me ASK 019673 is the type of galaxy he apparently incorrectly thought he had in #338.

After striking out learning more about this neat galaxy I turned my attention on the rest of the field which, with the galaxy cluster, has a lot of interesting galaxies, including an entry in the Flat Galaxy Catalog, FGC 2132, that's likely a member of the cluster. MCG+10-25-021 is a strange disk galaxy well beyond the cluster that I'd like to see more clearly but the star atop it doesn't help any.

There are 10 quasars and quasar candidates (UvES) in the image which is quite a ways above average. There may be an 11th toward the lower right. It is listed as both a galaxy and quasar. It seems more galaxy like to me. The broad line AGN classification for the galaxy may be more reasonable.

The A2 star sent some nasty reflections over much of the upper right quadrant. I removed some of it but some remains. In doing so I likely reduced the size of NGC 6370 somewhat. The same camera and filters on my 6" f/4 don't create this issue so I have to figure the corrector of the SCT is somehow involved.

NGC 6370 was discovered by Lewis Swift on April 19, 1885.

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

Related Designations for PGC60230

PGC65779

II Zw 096/PGC 65779 as a collision of at least two galaxies in Delphinus east of the dolphin's nose. Redshift puts it about 470 to 480 million light-years away. Oddly NED gives the greater value to the pair and the lesser to both individually which makes no sense to me. The II Zw catalog lists four objects under the II Zw 096 designation. The annotated image points to the A, B, C and D objects. Oddly while C and D point to a region of massive star formation (C) and a potent H alpha region (D) there's no designation for the huge arc of stars to the east. Spitzer and the HST have studied this mash-up. I'll save my fingers and point you to their page on it at http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/images/3432-sig10-023b-Hubble-View-of-Galaxy-Merger-II-Zw-096 .

Using 470 million light-years for the distance the mash-up is about 90,000 light-years east to west and 77,000 light-years north to south. So these aren't massive spirals

Being in the Zone of Avoidance there's little else available on the field. The low surface brightness spiral to the southeast isn't listed in NED in any form, let alone as a galaxy. I marked it with a question mark for this reason. The only other galaxy with redshift data is CGCG 448-019 in the upper right corner. It resides a good 100 million light-years closer to us but shows few details.

This is another case where the weather was going south on me. Since green is least important I put it last. Sure enough, the weather clouded in on the second green but with a subject like this one green is sufficient so I didn't put it on the reshoot list for that reason. Still, it is one that I can actually put the 0.5" resolution of the system to good use on. Such nights are rare but can happen so it is back on the reshoot list if such a night comes along.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RB=2x10' G=1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for PGC65779