IC0311

IC 311 is a very strange edge on? galaxy on the south-southeast edge of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster, Abell 426. It is located about 190 million light-years away. The cluster has an average distance of 240 million light-years so it isn't likely a member of the cluster. What drew my interest to this galaxy is that it appears to be an edge on spiral galaxy seen very close to perfectly edge on. The dust lane bisects the galaxy perfectly. But then there's a second dust lane below the linear one. This one is curved and appears to be in two parts. There's a sudden jog a bit right of the vertical axis where this second dust lane jumps north a bit on the western (right) side. The lane seems tilted with respect to the galaxy itself and the dust lane running directly through the core. Is this second dust lane due to something IC 311 is digesting? I found absolutely nothing on it other than a comment in one paper that it exists. But that doesn't mention the sudden break offsetting the northern and southern parts by about the dust lanes diameter. I measure its diameter at about 90 thousand light-years so it is a respectable spiral. There is some disagreement as to classification. NED says S? while Seligman says Sb? pec. I much prefer Seligman's take on it. That second dust lane where none should be certainly is peculiar. It was discovered by Lewis Swift on October 10, 1888.

Apparently, it isn't strange enough to have been investigated. Being near the Zone of Avoidance the entire field is poorly researched. While the SDSS has covered this area the data isn't in NED as yet so I didn't pick it up. A high-resolution image from the survey that shows the discontinuity of the second unexpected dust lane can be seen here http://cseligman.com/text/atlas/ic311.jpg

No other galaxy in the image had redshift data. Many aren't in either NED or SIMBAD. Two I especially wanted to find information on fell into that category. They could be two interacting galaxies or more likely two very different galaxies seen along the same line of sight from our position in the universe. There's a somewhat red star-like object between them that's much fainter than either yet that did make it into NED's database. I doubt it is related to either of the other two and none had distance data of course. I've marked the two unknowns each with a question mark in the annotated image.

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




http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/OTHER/IC0311/IC0311L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/OTHER/IC0311/IC0311L4X10RGB2X10CROP125.JPG
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/OTHER/IC0311/IC0311L4X10RGB2X10ID.JPG

Related Designations for IC0311

IC0320

This field is on the far southeastern edge of the Abell 426 galaxy cluster. It is better known as the Perseus Galaxy Cluster or the NGC 1275 galaxy cluster. NGC 1275 is about 1.33 degrees northwest of this field. The cluster is about 230 to 240 million light-years distant. I was most interested in IC 320 and PGC 12816. The latter is has a non-redshift distance that fits the cluster. Though its redshift puts it about as much closer to us as IC 320 is further away. Both are listed as cluster members. Their redshift distances may be due to their orbital velocity and being on the outskirts of the cluster which is considered to be very large being over 800 minutes of arc across. I found no non-redshift distance measurements for it. Assuming the redshift distance of 310 million light-years is right for IC 320 I measure its size at 120,000 light-years. PGC 12816 is 95,000 light-years across at its redshift distance. If both are considered to be at the cluster's distance then IC 310 is 90,000 light-years across and PGC 12816 130,000 light-years across. They almost trade places. IC 320 was discovered by Lewis Swift on September 14, 1888. Dreyer says of it "extremely faint, pretty small, round, very faint star close to west". I measure that star at magnitude 14.6. That would be faint in my 10" reflector but easy in the 14" on a good night which this one wasn't.

Galaxy clusters are often dominated by elliptical or S0 galaxies. Moreso at the center than at the edges. That seems to apply here as this field has more spiral galaxies than in normally seen in a galaxy cluster. Though many of them may be beyond the cluster as redshift data for many was not available. They do look more distant if angular size is any clue.

Note the pair of apparently interacting galaxies to the southwest of center and directly west of the asteroid. Only the plumed blue galaxy has a redshift putting it 630 million light-years away. Its red companion has no distance estimate that I could find. So my surmise that they are interacting is mostly due to the huge plume from the southern galaxy. I suppose the red galaxy could just be unrelated but without distance data, I'm going to assume it is the cause of the plumes. Though they could be due to a merger with a galaxy no longer visible except to a spectroscope due to its stars having a different motion than those on the big galaxy. For now, I'll go with them being interacting.

I was surprised that while the galaxy cluster is well studied a surprising (to me at least) number of galaxies in the image had no redshift value. All that did are shown in the annotated image.

The night this was taken was rather poor for transparency. This is shown by the trail of the one asteroid in the image (155691) 2000 OS22. It is listed as being 18.4 magnitude. I should have shown the red, green and blue trails if the night had reasonable transparency. Those don't show even on the FITS images. Thus the conditions cost me over a magnitude. Note too that the asteroid trail has a dim spot near the center. That shows clouds must have gotten rather thick for a bit while the image was taken. I apparently was not watching the data come in as I made no notes about transparency suffering at some point during the imaging run. One other asteroid at magnitude 20.4 was in the image. Normally those show well in the luminance frames. It was so faint in the FITS luminance images it didn't survive processing. Most asteroids I image are in Retrograde when I take them so moving west but both were moving east in normal motion when this image was taken.

Given the night's poor transparency I wish I'd given it more than my usual 40 minutes of luminance time.

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

Related Designations for IC0320

IC0334

IC 334 is a very disturbed galaxy in northwestern Camelopardalis near its borders with Cepheus and Cassiopeia. Redshift puts it about 113 million light-years distant while a single Tully-Fisher measurement is pretty much in agreement saying 122 million light-years. NED shows its classification as simply S? It appears likely it is the result of a merger that happened some time ago. Long enough in the past that most of its blue stars have long since died off. Though it did host supernova SN 2008hy in its northern tidal plume. I was surprised to find very little on this interesting looking galaxy. This far north, galaxy data is very thin. NED had nothing but the coordinates of a handful of 2MASS galaxies with no magnitude or redshift data. Due to the lack of data, I didn't prepare an annotated version.

There is a lot of faint nebulosity around the field. The band going south from IC 334 is rather obvious. Yet I couldn't find anything on it. I assume it is IFN (Interstellar Flux Nebula) that is rather common near the pole. Though looking at the red POSS plate inverted with a heavy stretch it looks like a possible faint plume from the galaxy's past merger.

As is common with 2012 images, the weather did a number on me. A lot of frames were worthless. Out of some 30 frames taken I used only 4 of the "best" luminance frames. The color data was even worse. Only one green frame was usable. Blue were all poor so I chose the best three and hoped for the best. I did find 2 rather good red frames. So the color balance of this one may be skewed to the red, especially in fainter areas.

It was discovered by Britsh astronomer William Denning on September 30, 1891. He is considered the discoverer of 17 IC objects with his 10" telescope. Apparently, he was active only from 1889 to 1893.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' R=2x10' G=1x10' B=3x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for IC0334

IC0342

IC 342 The Hidden Galaxy. Heavily obscured behind the dust of our galaxy it is difficult to observe. Without the dust it would be one of the showpieces of the sky. It's distance has been hard to pin down with estimates of 9 to 13 million light years most commonly seen. In March of this year a team using Hubble images claim it is 3.93 megaparsecs distant give or take 0.1 megaparsec. For the megaparsec challenged out there that translates to 12.8 million light years give or take 0.3 million light years. http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.0321 . The article is an interesting read and not as deep as many.

I don't like my color data. Being so heavily obscured it is very red as the blue and some of the green light it emits is absorbed by the dust in our galaxy turning it red same as dust in our atmosphere turns the sun red at sunset. Complicating this task is the extinction due to dust varies across the galaxy. It's angular size is great enough that parts are obscured by different dust clouds of different densities. I tried to compensate for the dust but the usual formulas didn't work well. I thought it a good night but apparently it wasn't as good as I thought. I will try again with my new filters when I get a chance but for now this will have to do. HII data would be nice to add as well as this one is full of HII regions that I lost trying to compensate for extinction.

It is classed as SAB(rs)cd;Sy2 with an HII core. You have to look hard to find the short bar. It and Maffei 1 anchor a group of galaxies just beyond our local group. Most are heavily obscured by dust, many, including Maffei 1 are virtually invisible in ordinary light and only seen to their true extent by infrared telescopes. 5 years ago I tried to image it and Maffei II but my technique was poor resulting in very little being seen and then with no color data. I need to try again. It was discovered by Edward Barnard on August 11, 1890.

There are only 3 other galaxies listed in NED in the image. Two are starlike until you blow up the image. The third is a very blue object at about pixel 179x821 on the far left side of the image 179 pixels in. To me it looks like part of IC 342 as there's a lot of faint glow of the galaxy shining through the gunk of our galaxy around it. I took it to be another blue HII region but NED say it is IRAS 03443+6754 an IR source and LEDA 166480 a galaxy. Thus it is a high IR emitting galaxy. But there's an "essential note" at NED saying "Claimed to be part of IC 0342 by Lawrence, et al.(1999MNRAS.308..897L)." I'm with Lawrence.

On the east side of the galaxy below a string of blue starlike HII regions is a very red oval (mostly horizontal). Sure looks like an elliptical galaxy that's severely reddened from its natural red color. But NED shows only an HII region at this position. After a lot of processing various ways I have decided NED is right. It appears to really be two red stars not quite resolved and a red HII emission feature. While Hubble imaged parts of the galaxy it missed this area by about 1.5 minutes of arc. Close but no image to settle this. For now I'll agree with NED.

This marks the last of my December images, with only three due to severe cloud cover there weren't many. Fortunately January was a better month with 18 objects imaged over 5 imaging days, 12 being Arp galaxies. Not good but sure beats December with one imaging night that was cloud shortened.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=8x10' RGB=4x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for IC0342

IC0357

This field is located in Taurus about 4 degrees southeast of M45 and thus in some of the outer nebulosity the cluster is passing through. My image scale is too large and exposure time too short to bring it out as more than an uneven backdrop for these galaxies. The 4th magnitude K0III 37 Tauri cast a nasty gradient across the image further dimming the nebulosity. I thought I had it far enough out of the field but it hit something in the camera making a mess across the frame.

The main galaxy in this image is IC 357. To its east is the double galaxy system of VV 777 and the dwarf LEDA 213269 just above them. VV 777 is composed of UGC 02942 and 02943. UGC 02943 appears to be behind UGC 02942 and does have a very slightly greater redshift. It appears the pair is interacting as UGC 02942 has a plume on its western (right) side and the northern ansa of 02943 appears distorted once it rises above the disk of 02942. Unfortunately, a large reflection ring cast by my corrector plate from 37 Tauri happened to lie atop this pair making it harder to tell exactly what is going on. Galaxy pairs such as these are sometimes called "Crossed Sword Galaxies" though maybe today it should be "Crossed Lightsaber Galaxies." VV 777 and IC 357 are all about 280 million light-years distant and are part of a much larger system of 14 galaxies LDCE 0281 that NED puts at 283 million light-years. Though only these three have redshift data in my frame. The cluster center is off the edge of my frame on the eastern side so most of the galaxies are likely out of frame as well.

IC 357 may have been disturbed by an interaction in the distant past as it looks like a typical two arm barred spiral with extra arm segments not really connected to either main arm. One lies above the northern arm. One is just below the core of the galaxy and is rather broad with fuzzy edges. Below it is a thin arm going south and a bit west that is sharply defined in comparison to the rest of the galaxy. IC 357 was discovered by Truman Safford on January 1, 1867.

Assuming a distance of 280,000,000 light-years for these three galaxies, IC 357 is about 100,000 light-years across so similar in size to our galaxy, this includes the faint upper northern arm and the fine southern one. UGC 2942 is nearly as big at 96,000,000 light-years including the western plume. While it may appear smaller, UGC 2943 is actually the largest thanks to the plume off its northern ansa at 110,000,000 light-years. No distance is given for the "nearby" dwarf but if it actually is part of this group then it isn't a dwarf being 42,000 light-years across. No other galaxy in the field had a redshift at NED and only a few others were even listed there. I've included all that NED mentions as being galaxies.

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

Related Designations for IC0357

IC0359

IC 359 is a strange galaxy in Taurus about 180 million light-years distant. It is classified as E or S0? depending on the source. The only problem is that it has blue spiral arms. There are 2 of them that are wide open like an Sd galaxy. The eastern arm is broader and less distinct than the western. Are they faint because the galaxy is heavily obscured or because they really are faint? I favor the latter since they are quite blue. I'd expect extinction to make them white to somewhat red in color. There's, even more, confusion about this galaxy as some catalogs, and even my The Sky 6 Pro confuses it with nearby LBN 782 a reflection nebula. But it refers to the reflection nebula as Lorenzin IC 359 and identifies it as a nebula. It's original discovery by Lewis Swift on Christmas day 1891 misplaced it one minute to the east where there is nothing of interest. Most feel this was just a one digit error in noting the position. The declination was correct. LBN 782 is over a degree and a half away and not his object no matter what some catalogs say.

The only other objects of interest in my image are UGC 02985 and 02986. Both have a redshift very similar to that of IC 359 putting all three at about 180 million light-years though a few Tully-Fisher measurements of UGC 02985 puts it 50 million light-years closer. No such estimates are available for the other two. For now, I'll assume the 180 million light-year figure. It was discovered by Lewis Swift on December 25, 1891.

UGC 02985 is listed as an Scd: galaxy. It has an odd dust lane system that doesn't seem to describe a spiral pattern to my eye. One even angled down and out of the galaxy from the core region, far from what I'd expect. The galaxy is rather red. Like with IC 359 this could be due to extinction or it really is red. To be consistent I'll say it really is red.

To the north is UGC 02986. While I saw it as a spiral it is classified as an irregular galaxy of the Magellanic type. It is somewhat bluer than its neighbor, UGC 2985.

While this pair seems small compared to IC 359 they are really rather normal in size. At the 180 million light-year distance UGC 02985 about 80 million light-years across while its companion is almost 60 million light-years in size, large for an irregular galaxy. That means IC 359 is huge thanks to its wide arms. I measure it at about 300 million light-years across. That's huge for a spiral. It may be even larger. My data is poor and very noisy. I see hints the arm on the east side (come out of the bottom of the galaxy) may extend nearly to an anonymous galaxy above the core I've noted with a question mark since it isn't listed at NED.

There's a faint strip of nebulosity in the upper left corner. It isn't in any catalog. All I find is that SIMBAD shows an IR source at that location but gives no other information. I doubt it is related.

I tried over several nights for this galaxy but the weather conspired against me every time. This image is made from the best 10 out of 24 I kept and out of about 50 of which most were discarded. While the luminosity was poor the color frames are even worse making the color data rather iffy. The fainter regions may be too red as the blue data was taken under the worst skies. All this results in a rather noisy image due to the extreme stretch needed to pull out the faint arms around IC 359.

I need to credit Jim Thommes for introducing me to the strangeness of this galaxy. I had completely overlooked it as not at all interesting as no image I'd seen showed the arm's until he posted his wide field image containing it and noticed the faint arms. I had considered putting it on my to-do list due to the confusion over its identity not realizing it had the odd structure. After seeing Jim's image I put it at top priority and spent the rest of January, including the night he posted it, trying to capture something useful but mostly failing. http://www.jthommes.com/Astro/LDN1495LBN782.h

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

Related Designations for IC0359

IC0391

IC 391 made my list as it fits Arp's category for 3 armed spiral galaxies. None of the three that made his list are truly 3 armed. Like IC 391 one of the arms is a disconnected arm segment rather than an arm coming off the core or a bar. Still, it looks more like it is truly 3 armed than the three in Arp's atlas to my eye. It is located in Camelopardalis 12 degrees south of the north celestial pole. Redshift measurements put it 69 million light-years distant though a single Tully Fisher measurement says 83 million but with a fairly large error bar. Still, the Hubble image of it says it is 80 million light-years away. How they determine this I don't know. Going with the 80 million light-year distance the galaxy's spiral arms span some 23,000 light-years. The outer halo is some 35,000 light-years across. This isn't a very big spiral galaxy. NED classifies it as SA(s)c. Its core is surprisingly small, almost star-like in my image.

The galaxy was discovered by William Denning on November 7, 1890. One reference says it probably is a starburst galaxy though NED doesn't mention this at all. Nor does the Hubble website. It only talks about the supernova in it back in 2001. The text and HST image is at: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1105a/ . Their exposure wasn't sufficient to pick up but hints of the outer halo.

This field is too far north to be covered by the Sloan Survey and most others but for the 2MASS. Not one galaxy in the field but IC 391 has a published redshift I could find and with little else available on the field, not even an asteroid, this far north of the ecliptic, I didn't prepare an annotated image.

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

Related Designations for IC0391

IC0421

IC 421 and VV 848 are a pair of interesting but unrelated galaxies either of which could have easily made Arp's atlas of peculiar galaxies. The field is located where you'd not expect such interesting galaxies to reside, Orion 2.6 degrees south of the far more famous Orion Nebula.

IC 421 would qualify for Arp's category of galaxies with one heavy arm. Besides the long drawn out and rather bright arm to the north the galaxy's structure is very lopsided with the core well east of the center of the galaxy's disk. It is classed as SAB(rs)bc and is about 165 million light-years distant by redshift though a few Tully Fisher measurements put it some 20 million light-years closer. It is a rather low surface brightness galaxy but for that one arm. Including its faintest outer parts, it is nearly 200,000 light-years across. It was discovered by Williamina Flemming on June 27, 1888. The story of how a woman astronomer at Harvard managed such a feat is rather interesting. At the time women were reduced to menial tasks though often demanding good math skills as they were human calculators in many cases. Williamina was a Scottish woman abandoned by her husband and working as a maid for Edward Pickering who according to legend was so upset with his male assistants proclaimed his maid could do a better job -- and she did. She didn't find objects looking through the telescope but by examining photographic survey plates. Most of her work was for star identification and classification. She is credited with 43 IC objects however with not the most famous of her finds. She was the first to notice IC 434 describing a dark patch in it now known as the Horsehead Nebula. The image was taken by William Pickering, brother to the far more famous Edward Pickering. Dreyer gave credit for all of Harvard discoveries in the first IC addition to Pickering but didn't specify which Pickering. Most assume he meant William. Later discoveries in the second addition were credited properly.

VV 848, at a redshift distance of nearly 400 million light-years and classed as S0+ pec: by NED, would qualify for Arp's atlas under any of several possible categories. Material ejected from the nucleus or diffuse counter-tails or just diffuse elements would all seem to fit as he has something similar in all of these. In any case, this is obviously (to us 50 years later) due to a past interaction with the diffuse material, counter-tail or ejected material being tidal plumes from the interaction. The question remains; what did the interacting? The MCG says of it: "Interacting. The tail 0.6 arcmin long is directed away from the galaxy 18 mag, and is at 1.4 arcmin north." That would indicate they don't see the tail .6' tail reaching all 1.4' to the galaxy? I don't follow this comment as it is obviously connected. Even more interesting this dates to 1963 before Arp's atlas was published and before many of the images were taken yet he never mentioned interaction being involved with his entries that clearly were due to interaction. Still, this doesn't answer the question of what did the interacting? It is over twice the distance to IC 421 by redshift so that galaxy is ruled out. NPM1G -07.0197 is the same distance, much smaller and looks pretty much undisturbed. There is an odd puff in its outer halo sort of on the side toward VV848. Still, could such a small galaxy do this to a much larger one? If the large galaxy is low density it could but that doesn't appear the case here. The only other candidate is LEDA 3080980 10 minutes north and well out of my frame. It is even smaller and less disturbed so definitely ruled out. The galaxy near NPM1G -07.0197 is 2MASX J05325377-0745054 and shows no sign of disturbance and has no distance data available if it did so I rule it out as well. Is this a merger? I can't find anything either way so it will have to remain a mystery. While it may appear smaller than IC 421 that's an illusion due to its large distance. It measures over 225,000 light-years cross including the plumes north and south.

Being in the zone of avoidance this field is very poorly studied and I found little to annotate but included what little I could find on it with redshift data.

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

Related Designations for IC0421

IC0423

IC 423 and IC 424 are a pair of reflection nebula in the region of Orion's belt two thirds of the way from Alnilam (middle star) and Mintaka (western belt star). I found no distances for these. Both seem to have tails pointing to Mintaka and heads pointing to more distant by angular measurement Alnilam. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that since their heads are toward Alnilam that it is the illuminating star. It is a B0Ia star at 1342 light-years per The Sky's database. Mintaka is a 09.5II star about 900 light-years distant. That puts it in front of most of the nebulae in the area with known distances.

IC 423 is sometimes called "The Teardrop Nebula". Considering how bad my imaging weather has been for months that seems appropriate. An interesting description of IC 423 going back to an image taken with the Crossley reflector and published in 1918 reads: "A very peculiar and interesting mass of diffuse nebulosity, 6' x 4'. The central part is vacant, giving the object the general appearance of a pear-shaped ring, rounded at the southern end and pointed at the northern end, which is directed approximately toward {delta} Orionis, 27' distant. There are flame-like protuberances on each side to the north. Quite faint." By today's imaging standards it isn't all that faint and certainly not "vacant" in the center. That region is much redder and somewhat dimmer but not empty. I couldn't find the Crossley image itself, unfortunately.

IC 424 has two stars in it. To my pareidolia challenged brain they look like slightly red and blue eyes. I turned the cropped image to south up. Is it a three-eared cat or a ghost? The Crossley description reads: "A smaller mass of diffuse nebulosity, somewhat resembling I 423; 2.5' x 1'; the sharper western endpoints to {delta} Orionis, 24' distant." Delta is Mintaka. To me, that's backwards. The Delta end is fuzzier, not sharper and fades away. Like IC423 it has a reddish darker core that sort of makes the nose of the cat or ghost.

Both were discovered by Williamina Fleming on June 27, 1888. A short bio of her reads: "Scottish-American astronomer. Abandoned by her husband, she was reduced to working as a maid. Her employer, a professor of astronomy at Harvard, was so dissatisfied with the work of his assistants that he claimed: "My maid could do a better job." And she did, becoming one of the most famous female astronomers of the 19th century, and an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society."

Conditions went down while this was taken. They were pretty good for the luminance data but transparency went bad on me for the color data. This meant I picked up nothing but noise for the faint nebulosity in the background. I didn't realize this until I went to process it too late to take more color data.

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

Related Designations for IC0423

IC0426

IC 426 is a reflection nebula in Orion, likely illuminated by Mintaka, the right hand star in Orion's belt. Like nearly all the nebulae in Orion, it is part of a vast cloud of dust and gas about 1300 light-years distant. The little piece that is IC 426 is about 2 light-years across. It is commonly seen in wide angle images of Orion's Belt -- the one in the sky not the one in "Men in Black". But no one seems to pay it any attention mentioning far more commonly seen objects in the field while ignoring poor IC 426. If it were anyplace else in the sky it would likely not be so overlooked. There appears to be a rather odd blue "jet" coming out of a blue star on the left side of the image. This is due to the star hitting a dust spec on the optical window in front of the sensor. It's not real.

The nebula was discovered by Williamina Flemming on June 27, 1888.

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

Related Designations for IC0426