VII ZW 466

VII Zw 466 is an empty ring galaxy about 650 million light-years away in the tail of Draco. It is 4.6 minutes north of NGC 4613, another type of ring galaxy. VII Zw 466 is what is called an "empty ring galaxy" since it consists only of a ring with no core. These are thought to be due to a direct hit by a high speed small but massive galaxy. Could it be one of the three galaxies also named VII Zw 467 to its east? Two are known to be at about the same redshift and likely distance. The third has no redshift data that I could find. There is a reddish object in the "empty" core of VII Zw 466 at the northwest edge. Could this be the core of the galaxy or is it the colliding galaxy? Its position is the one NED uses for VII Zw 466 itself rather than the center of the ring. This could indicate NED considers it at least part of the galaxy. For now, I'll say it is most likely the remains of the galaxy's core.

I've noted the three VII Zw 467 galaxies on the annotated image. The northern one had no redshift data. Also identified in the image is VII Zw 468 at 630 million light-years. Several other galaxies at about this same distance are noted in the annotated image.

Several UvES objects are noted in the annotated image. These are likely quasars. Their identification is by photographic means, not as accurate as using a spectrograph. Distance is less certain as well.

NGC 4513 is much closer at 110 million light years. It has an interesting mostly disconnected faint diffuse ring. It is classed as (R)SA0^0^ at NED and S0 at the NGC project. It was discovered by Heinrich d'Arrest on October 16, 1866.

To the right of center is a blue object at 2.3 billion light-years. NED shows it both as a galaxy and a quasar so it got a double label G/Q. It's also an IR source, 2MASX J12302215+6621551.

There's an interesting pair of galaxies to the southwest of NGC 4513 beyond a bright orange star. Only the right member has a redshift measurement. That puts it at the same distance as the VII Zw galaxies. Are the two really close together or is this a line of sight coincidence? Neither looks distorted so I'll say they aren't close enough to interact. Mostly a guess on my part.

To the east of NGC 4513 I was sure I saw two galaxy clusters but while NED shows the galaxies individually, none with redshift data, it shows no galaxy cluster at those two locations. I've marked them with GC? The upper left one is very faint and looked like noise but it shows on the Sloan image of the area. One is obviously a star in the Sloan's higher resolution but the rest appear to be galaxies. Same for the brighter group. I seem to have a need for a slightly larger image area as several clusters were listed just barely beyond my field on all sides. One appears to have some of its galaxies in the frame so I marked it with a line going off-frame. The center is 19 seconds of arc north of the frame's edge. It is WHL J123106.8+663229 at 2.3 billion light-years. Look along the top, right of center.

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

Related Designations for VII ZW 466

VII Zw 770

VII Zw 770 is a strange galaxy northeast of the head of Draco about 420 million light-years away by its redshift. NED classifies it as N galaxy? Those are defined as: "A galaxy with a small, bright, blue nucleus superposed on a much fainter red background. In terms of form, color, spectrum, redshift, and optical and radio variability, N galaxies are intermediate between quasars and Seyfert galaxies. The "N" designation comes from the Morgan classification."

If you've never heard of this system here's a short version: "A scheme invented by William Morgan that uses the integrated spectrum of the stars of a galaxy together with its shape (real and apparent) and its degree of central concentration. It specifies the galactic spectral type, a, af, f, fg, g, gk, or k (corresponding to the integrated stellar types); the form, type S (spiral), B (barred spiral), E (elliptical), I (irregular), Ep (elliptical with dust absorption), D (rotational symmetry without pronounced spiral or elliptical structure), L (low surface brightness), or N (small bright nucleus); and the inclination to the line of sight, from 1 (face-on) to 7 (edge-on). For example, the Andromeda Galaxy is classified as kS5."

To me, it looks like a typical small elliptical with two non-concentric rings with one centered to the right and one to the left of the core. But the CGPG says of it: "Red elliptical compact surrounded by a blue ring and two blue partial ring-like clouds beyond." That's three rings, two incomplete. I can't say I see that third ring nor do they appear blue, more white with a slight red tinge. I have no idea what is meant by the word "beyond".

Down and to the left is an edge on galaxy with a small apparent galaxy off its northern ansa. It appears slightly warped to me. Unfortunately, it isn't listed as a galaxy at NED only as an Ultraviolet source picked up by the Galex Uv satellite. The object to the north isn't in NED at all. Like everything else in the field, there's no distance data for it. Only a handful of galaxies in the field are even listed at NED as galaxies. Many others as UvS objects but considering the vast majority of the UvS objects listed are just stars I can't easily distinguish between a star-like galaxy or star and with many hundred, all with only approximate positions I didn't even try. Thus there's no annotated image with this image.

The only other galaxy worth mentioning is 2MASX J18100635+5822556 directly east of VII Zw 770. It shows two unequal faint diffuse arms. NED has nothing on it, not even a magnitude. This part of Draco is mostly ignored by galaxy research. Because of this, no annotated image was made.

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

Related Designations for VII Zw 770

VII Zw 941

VII Zw 941 is another one Arp missed. It would fit with his category for spirals with high surface brightness companions on the arm except that arm is mostly missing. So it might also fit his one-armed spiral category. It is located in Cepheus 1.6 degrees west of NGC 188. Both are very red as are the other galaxies in the image. There is some blue extinction at this galactic latitude but not enough to account for all these red galaxies. Apparently, they just are red. The CGPG catalog note on this galaxy pair says: "...red pair of Sc (galaxies) with compact core and spherical compact." NED doesn't attempt to classify either. The main one does appear Sc with a compact core but I'm not sure about the companion. Hard to tell if that's its fuzz around it or remains of the missing spiral arm of the brighter galaxy. In any case, the pair is listed at a redshift that puts them about a half billion light years distant. NED has no redshift data for any other galaxy in the field, not even the companion. NED shows a correct position for the main galaxy and for the companion but it also lists a third entry with nothing at that position. Since the only note they have is identical in all three I assume it is referring to this pair. But I can't make any sense out of the third entry.

No other galaxy in the image has any distance data. Therefore I've not prepared an annotated image.

The field, being near the pole, is enveloped in the IFN associated with the pole area. My exposures weren't long enough to really bring it out but it is responsible for all the faint nebulosity in the field.

The blue glow at bottom right is due to a star that was giving me fits. I moved the field low thinking I'd moved it out of the field far enough but it managed to get its glow into the image anyway. I might as well have left it in the image.

This image was taken after a severe storm so damaged my two Polaris Trees, I've often mentioned, that they were in danger of falling on either the house or the observatory or lower garage. One of those would most likely get flattened. Since they were over 100' tall there was no place to drop them that wouldn't damage something expensive, I had to hire a tree company to take them down. Turned out both had suffered severe damage in the past that was hidden. They could have come down any time since we built here. The storm just exposed this risk so the only thing flattened was the bank account.

This galaxy is at 85 degrees north. I now can see Polaris for the first time since building the observatory! This galaxy has been frustratingly out of reach all these years. So was first on the list once the trees were history. They will heat us all next winter. Enough wood in those two to provide all our wood heat needs. Solar provides most of the day winter heating, even at -30C temperatures by day and colder at night. They were huge red pine. Rings show them to be almost 200 years old. Loggers should have taken them when this area was logged about 1908. The tree service said that's likely when they suffered a severe rot problem so were left. Logging was by hand in those days. They only took perfect trees and these were too damaged for them to take. Both showed they'd been hit by lightning several times as well. I kept them as they blocked snow from the observatory. Last year we had virtually none. So that wasn't an issue. But will I be as lucky this year? Probably not.

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

Related Designations for VII Zw 941

WBL071

This field is in Andromeda less than a degree southeast of the far more famous NGC 891. CGCG 538-059/PGC 9101 is one Arp missed for his category spiral galaxies with a low surface brightness galaxy on an arm. Like many Arp put in this category the companion has no redshift data. In this case, the field is very poorly cataloged so it isn't even listed. While it appears likely it is a true companion I can't verify it. It is a very blue galaxy that could indicate interaction. The main galaxy has one cut off arm and one long one apparently drawn out by the companion. I moved it to the upper right of the image to pick up as much of the WBL 071 galaxy cluster as possible.

WBL 071 is a part of the much larger Abell 0347 galaxy cluster. The center of the Abell cluster is a few minutes south of the bottom edge of my image. It is listed as having a diameter of 863 minutes or 14.4 degrees! That can't be right. Abell lists no diameter in his catalog. 86.3 minutes would be reasonable but is it right? It is listed as Richness Class 0 which is the smallest class in number of galaxies with 30 to 49 galaxies. WBL 071 is listed with 18 galaxies with no size. It is centered a bit NE of NGC 906. NGC 911 is listed as a member of the WBL 071 group. NGC 898 is not listed as being a member of either group.

In the upper left corner is an odd grouping of galaxies. It appears to be a cluster of apparently very distant galaxies around a large elliptical. Oddly the entire group seems the same orange color as if some paintbrush was used to color that part of my image with the same color. While 7 of the galaxies are in NED none have a redshift. Is the color due to some dust cloud between the group and us or is the group distant enough that this is due to general dust and gas extinction? All of these that NED lists are from the 2MASS catalog so are dusty galaxies emitting a lot of IR light. Wish I knew more about this group.

The annotated image lists what few galaxies NED had redshift distance data. Since room wasn't a problem I listed them by catalog name, classification and distance in billions of light-years. Oddly this turned up two apparent mistakes. CGCG 538-060 classed as E/U is an obvious spiral rather than an elliptical. Anyone know what the /U means. It's new to me nor did I turn up anything on it as a classification. The other error involves CGCG 538-059 which was my main target! NED classes it as SB, that is a barred spiral. I see no hint of a bar and the arms deserve at least a "b" rating. That is what a note at NED says. It classes it as Sb. Probably just a capitalization error at NED.

All four WBL 071 NGC galaxies were discovered by Édouard Stephan. He found NGC 906, 909 and 911 on October 30, 1878 and NGC 914 a month later on November 30, 1878. NGC 898 was discovered by William Herschel on October 17, 1786. It's not in either of the H400 programs.

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Related Designations for WBL071

WBL073

WBL 073 is a 5 galaxy group in Aries the ram. NED puts the group's distance at 430 million light-years. The 5 are PGC 009220, NGC 0915, PGC 009233, NGC 0916 and NGC 0919. Note that NGC 0915 is much closer than the other 4 by redshift. Other galaxies in the image are at the right distance and likely members of the same group as the 4 but don't make the WBL 73 group criteria. Apparently, distance isn't important. I couldn't find any criteria but that the galaxy is magnitude 15.7 or brighter and has an overdensity of 10^(4/3). The catalog is known as the Catalog of Nearby Poor Clusters of Galaxies. The authors are, White, Bliton, Bhavsar, Bornmann, Burns, Ledlow and Loken. Apparently, WBBBBLL was shortened to WBL. The catalog has 732 entries. I only have a few on my to-do list. Since the southern cutoff is 2 degrees south all are within my range.

The three NGC galaxies were discovered by Albert Marth on September 5, 1864. The field is poorly studied bein in the Zone of Avoidance. I've listed everything on which NED has redshift data and identified those easily visible that don't have any distance data. Most don't have anything but their position.

As usual, this winter weather was poor for this image. The blue frames were hit by thin clouds creating nasty blue halos around bright blue stars. I toned them down but couldn't totally eliminate them without doing other harm. Transparency was poor for all frames limiting how deep I could go. This is the main reason the background seems strangely free of faint stars and galaxies. To take the noise I had to set the dark point higher than normal.

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

Related Designations for WBL073

WBL130

WBL 130 is a three galaxy group in the southeast corner of Lynx. NED lists it as being about 270 million light-years away and consisting of three galaxies. But what three? It would seem easy, the three obvious ones in my image. Problem is one of the three is a background galaxy. Redshift shows the lower left one, UGC 03679, to be an Sa galaxy that is 270 million light-years away. So far so good. The middle galaxy is CGCG 205-017, an Sb spiral at 267 million light-years. So that fits. But the upper right galaxy, UGC 03673, a SABcd spiral, is listed with a redshift that puts it 687 million light-years away. It is 2.5 times more distant yet only slightly smaller in angular size so must be about 2 times larger. So where is the third member of the group? Maybe this is it. The WBL catalog is labeled as being a catalog of nearby, poor, galaxy groups. It doesn't record distance so that was provided by NED from some other source. Nor does it list a diameter for the group. So it may be that it just records apparent groups whether they are all members of the same local group or not. But then we come to the flat galaxy at the bottom of my image. It is FGC 598, an Sd spiral that has a redshift that puts it 272 million light-years away. So it certainly is related to the lower two galaxies above. Also, NED lists a note about it under those two galaxies as well as under FGC 598. So that points to it being the third member. Are any of the other galaxies in the image also at about 270 million light-years? Darned if I know. These are the only 4 galaxies in the image on which NED has any redshift data. The few others it lists are all from the 2MASS survey and don't even include magnitude estimates since the survey isn't at visual light frequencies but those sort of between IR and radio.

UGC 3679 has a nice dark lane that is unsymmetrical and warped. It seems to have a very faint blue halo of stars about it. Are these due to interaction? Maybe just the result of eating a few dwarf galaxies that got too close. I measure it at about 64 arc seconds across which makes it almost 85,000 light-years across. A quite respectable spiral galaxy. CGCG 205-017 is nearly as large at about 82,000 light years in my image. FGC 598 is a bit smaller at about 60 million lightyears end to end. This leaves distant UGC 03673. I measure it at 50" across, which at 687 million light-years makes it huge at 166,000 light years in diameter. A very large spiral indeed.

There's another galaxy that is darned flat in the image. It is above FGC 598 and below CGCG 205-017. It is fainter and smaller than the other galaxies. It is 2MASX J07070773+4445336 but that's all I can tell you about it.

Sharp-eyed viewers might notice what appears to be a short linear asteroid trail in the lower right quadrant. At first, I thought it short due to it being taken over several nights (see below) but it shows clearly in all luminance frames taken over those three nights at exactly the same location! It also appears in the POSS plates. It must be yet another very flat galaxy but one that is very small with a sharp edge. Hard to imagine one that could look this way. I looked in vain for a higher resolution image of the object but found none. It's at 7h 6m 23.4s +44d 42' 8" for those who want to hunt further. It didn't make NED's short list of galaxies in the field so is anonymous as far as I can determine.

The color is a bit suspect in this image. I took the data over three nights, all of which had cloud issues. I took about 30 frames, most color frames but seeing was highly variable as well as transparency. I ended up using the best 4 luminance frames and best 2 color frames out of the bunch for each color. Adding any more seemed to reduce the quality of the image. Using these ten seemed to give the best final results. But the blue channel suffered compared to the other two colors. I had to wing it to compensate for this. So I'm not at all confident the color is right, just the best I can do with the data on hand. If the area was more interesting I'd reshoot all frames as even the luminance channel was hurt by the bad transparency and doesn't begin to go as deep as I usually do.

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

Related Designations for WBL130

WBL179

WBL 179 is in a field jam-packed with galaxies. The 7 brightest make up the WBL 179 group. 5 of which are about 400 million light-years distant and 2 are half that distance. This appears to be part of a much larger cluster, ZwCl 0820.6+0436 which is just over a degree in diameter and contains 163 galaxies. While NED puts it at about 400 million light-years distant the vast majority of the galaxies in my image and out to a larger area cover a wide range of distances. Many out to 1.2 billion light-years. NED lists a couple clusters at that distance, WHL J082258.9+041756 with 29 members and SDSS-C4-DR3 1283 with 23. Their positions differ by only 2" of arc so are likely referring to the same group, just defined slightly differently. Many other lesser groups are listed at NED that likely are subgroups of these. As usual, I picked up a few very distant galaxies but most fall within 1.3 billion light-years. The result is one of the densest annotated images I've made as I included all NED had a redshift value for and were bright enough to survive JPG compression.

What drew me to the field is that the brighter galaxies and stars seem arranged in an oval shape. This is lost in the annotated image but shows well in the full image. Our brains are designed to see patterns, though which ones seem a personal thing. Jesus in toast looked like Frank Zappa to me and I'm yet to see the "Running Chicken". Still, the oval struck me so it went on the to-do list. That large number of fainter galaxies were gravy.

The field is located in northwestern Hydra. All three IC galaxies were discovered by Lewis Swift on March 8, 1888. Apparently, the others were too faint for his telescope. He was using the 16" Clark refractor at Warner Observatory, Rochester, New York. It was later moved to Echo Mountain in California. Some of the other galaxies seem bright enough for a 16" refractor so how he missed them I don't understand. Though likely the expansion of Rochester was hurting his skies. He moved it to California in 1893, 5 years after finding these galaxies.

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

Related Designations for WBL179

WBL360

WBL 360 is a group of galaxies about 390 million light-years from us in the southwest corner of Virgo. There's a second group at 600 million light-years. One in this second group seems made up of two likely interacting galaxies. NED's position points to the gap between the two. These are below the main galaxies. The label NSA 140313 has two lines, one to each galaxy. They appear to be dwarf galaxies.

To the left of these near the left edge is 2dFGRS N175Z154. It is the middle of a tight vertical group of three galaxies. Only the middle one has redshift data. Are they related? Or are the two end ones related but the smaller and fainter middle one unrelated? I have no idea. Above these, is 2dFGRS N175Z152 which I've labeled as 3G as it appears all three are referred to by this catalog entry. They all overlap, even in the Sloan image of them. A trio of interacting galaxies? Again I have no idea.

In order to give catalog names to these that were more than just positions, I had to resort to quite an eclectic collection of catalogs. Normally when this happens I just go with G for Galaxy but in this case, I wanted to point out these double and triple galaxies. I had to resort to these catalogs to do so or give lengthy RA and Dec coordinates that often overlapped other objects.

5 asteroids were in the frame but one was just too faint to show so I labeled only 4 of them. The one omitted was listed by the Minor Planet Center as brighter than two I did label but was much fainter. I don't find their magnitude estimates all that accurate even after accounting for their angular velocity. I'm considering dropping the magnitude they provide as just too unreliable. Of course, a faster asteroid will appear fainter than a slow one of the same actual magnitude. I'm taking that into account. In fact, the one I left out was slower than the fainter ones I included making the error even more obvious.

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

Related Designations for WBL360

WBL409

WBL 409 is a group of three galaxies about 58 million light-years distant in Virgo not far from its major Virgo Cluster galaxies like M84, M86 and M87. These three are red and dead galaxies with little detail to be seen in them, not even the spiral NGC 4440 has any fine detail being mostly a fuzzy red spiral galaxy. IC 3349 is also likely a member of the group though its redshift puts it 80 million light-years out a non-redshift measurement puts it 61 million light-years. The redshift of Virgo cluster members is very wide-ranging and undependable as a distance measure. The three NGC galaxies were discovered by William Herschel on April 17, 1784. For some reason, NGC 4436 is classified as a dwarf elliptical or dwarf S0 galaxy even though it isn't all the much smaller than the other two. Assuming the 58 million light-year distance I measure NGC 4431 at 30,000 light-years, NGC 4436 at 29,000 light-years and NGC 4440 as being 44,000 light-years across None are in either H400 observing program. IC 3349 was discovered over 120 years later by Royal Frost on May 10, 1904. Assuming it too is about 58 million light-years distant I measure it at 16,600 light-years in size. It does deserve its dwarf label.

NGC 4431, NGC 4436 and NGC 4440 were discovered by William Herschel on April 17, 1784. They aren't in either H400 program.
IC 3349 was discovered by Royal Frost on May 10, 1904.

ASK 386242 in the eastern side of the image is interesting looking. I wish we weren't nearly 2 billion light-years from it as it has a huge drawn out arm or plume. I measure it, including the plume at nearly 150,000 light-years in size. Something has really happened to this galaxy. I found nothing on it, unfortunately.

The field contains several extremely low surface brightness dwarf galaxies. I labeled them even though I found no distance data for them. The one north of NGC 4440 is very faint and hard to see. The easiest being in the upper right corner.

Speaking of faint there are 4 asteroids in the image, three are also very faint and difficult to find. The brightest is not much brighter but I was surprised to find that it is not in the Minor Planet Center's database. This is yet another case of my not looking at an image until long after it was taken. If I had looked at it that day or the next I could have sent in the position for others to track or I could skies permitting. Now, weeks later, it is too late and it is again lost. I don't know how the constant surveys missed this one. Maybe they didn't and somehow it just didn't get in the database. In any case, I marked it as "Unknown". The three known ones are all magnitude 20.1 or fainter by the MPC's estimate. The unknown one is somewhat brighter.

Transparency wasn't all that great this night so I didn't pick up the faint dwarf galaxies as well as I'd hoped or expected to on a good night. This will have to do. I'll leave that to others.

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

Related Designations for WBL409

WBL685

This galaxy group is located in northern Pegasus at the border with Lacerta and about 1 degree north of the far more famous Deer Lick Galaxy, NGC 7331. The 6 brightest members are known as the UGC 12127 group and WBL 685. But the group is much larger than this. It is part of the B2 2236+35:[MLO2002] CLUSTER which in turn is part of the Zwicky cluster 2231.2+3732. Each designation has a slightly different distance estimate but it's in the 350 to 400 million light-year range depending on which galaxies redshift you use or average them to about 375 million light-years.

The 6 galaxies that make up the WBL 685 group are NGC 7342, PGC 069378, PGC 069385, PGC 069386, NGC 7345 and PGC 069406 using their WBL numbers 1-6 respectively. The annotated image lists distances to all in the group than NED had redshift data on. It only listed group members though you can see many, obviously very distant galaxies, in the background. While most refer to these by their UGC number I get a ton of email complaining I should use PGC numbers as their systems don't use UGC. The Sky I use to find them using either designation. NED doesn't carry anywhere near all PGC galaxies so this can be a pain. Two I listed are from the NSA catalog as it was much shorter than any other designation. They are not in PGC, UGC or other basic catalogs. NSA is the NASA-Sloan Atlas but while carried by NED it isn't carried by SIMBAD.

All galaxies in this group appear to fall into the red and dead category. None show any sign of recent star formation though since some are IR sources that may be going on behind hot obscuring dust. I didn't find much on this group. Still, I thought it interesting enough to put on the to-do list.

14" LX-200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for WBL685