NGC0514

NGC 514 is a rather low surface brightness spiral in southeast Pisces. Redshift puts it almost 100 million light-years distant while non-redshift measurements say 83 million light-years. It is a nice face on spiral. While listed at 11.6 magnitude it appears much fainter visually by a note I made in 1987 about it. It was discovered by William Herschel on October 16, 1784 and is in the second H400 program. Unfortunately, my log from that vanished during the move to Minnesota. A note from another time looking at it made the fainter than expected comment but nothing else. While many in the second program are featureless elliptical galaxies this is one of the better ones.

The field is in an area of the sky that isn't well studied for galaxies. While there are many in the field they are mostly distant ones by their appearance. The three with redshift value identified by NED as galaxies are over 2 billion light-years distant. I see a few that are close enough to show some detail. I've identified those even though I found no redshift for them. They are all ultraviolet objects found by the GALEX satellite which couldn't determine redshift. Apparently, they have not been followed up to find this value.

There is one object, only identified as UvS by NED, meaning it too is an Ultraviolet Source, that has a redshift value. That is a verified (s) spectroscopically determined redshift so should be accurate. That puts it nearly 12 billion light-years distant. Only a quasar should be seen by my system at that distance. Though it isn't even listed as a candidate quasar. Also, the position's error circle is over 2 seconds of arc in size with no magnitude given. While my position is near the center of that error circle I can't verify the star-like object is the one NED lists. Just that there's something I can see that is close to the center of the error circle.

There are three asteroids in the image. More actually, but conditions were so poor these are the only ones I picked up. Two are partly off the edge of the image. My luminance data as two gaps in it, Why I didn't record but it appears clouds caused my system to pause for them to clear enough to continue. Though the edges are surprisingly sharp. In any case that divides the luminance data into three parts. In the case of two of these asteroids, only two of the three are seen. They are moving from the lower right to upper left, normal motion rather that retrograde I usually see. The one at the bottom of the image is missing the first of the three while Cupido on the left is missing much of the second and all of the third segment. The reason I think clouds are involved is the third only shows the middle segment. The other two were too faint to register though parts of the third are hinted at in the last FITS frame. In any case, its trail varies in intensity as if clouds were involved. My limiting magnitude is about 1.5 brighter than normal, another indication I was imaging through clouds.

Cupido belongs the Flora family of asteroids that occupy the very inner portion of the main asteroid belt. They may be all do to a major collision of asteroids. (8) Flora is by far the largest at 140 km and was the 8th asteroid found. Some think the dinosaur-killing asteroid was a member of this group.

My wife and I had gone to town for supper and thinking the night good I'd left the system to take images. Coming home I saw the sky had gone cloudy and found the observatory has shut down but left the roof open as it will if clouds are too thick to image through but thin enough for hope it might clear -- which it did.
(763) Cupido was discovered September 25, 1913 in Heidelberg, Germany by Franz Kaiser while working on his Ph.D. He found 21 asteroids while working on his degree. This was the 12th. The naming citation is hidden from me by copyright and I'm not paying the steep price for the book that information is in. My somewhat Spanish speaking wife (she grew up in a town of 80% Mexican-Americans) tells me it is Spanish for Cupid. If anyone has the book "Dictionary of Minor Planet Names", edited by Lutz Schmadel please let us know more. Amazon sells it for $91.6 for the hardcover and over $200 for the paperback version. Or did they reverse that by mistake? Springer, the publisher sells the Ebook for "only" $179. I'm curious but not that curious.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=1x10' (observatory shut down due to poor skies), STL-11000XM, Paramount ME


http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/NGC/NGC0514/NGC0514L4SX10RGB1X10.JPG
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/NGC/NGC0514/NGC0514L4SX10RGB1X10ID.JPG

Related Designations for NGC0514

NGC0521

This is some of the NGC 0533 galaxy group located about 210 to 250 million light-years from us in northwestern Cetus. The group contains some 16 members scattered over the image and beyond. While named for NGC 0533 it was NGC 0521 that attracted my interest being a classic face on barred spiral though the bar is unusually narrow. Also, it is classified as having an internal ring. To me, it is a pseudo-ring (r') because it appears to just be two spiral arms coming off the bar that almost but don't quite overlap. I moved it a bit west of center to better pick up NGC 0533 and put them all low as I thought I saw some galaxies to the north. But I was looking at a rotated image, they were really to the south so I lost IC 1694 I particularly wanted to catch. It is a double ring galaxy which would have added a lot to the image. Don't make my mistake.

I found no image of this field taken by an amateur and only one of just NGC 521 that involved a few amateurs and one pro. It was taken by Adam Block and some amateur students of his astrophotography class at Mt. Lemmon's Caelum Observatory using their 32" scope. Other than this it appears totally missed by amateurs. Why such a neat field is ignored I can't fathom. I've had it on my to-do list since before I built my observatory but weather has been so bad when it was within a hour of the meridian it hadn't been taken until last month. Amateurs are always asking "What else is there to image?" There are hundreds of ignored fields like this few take the time to hunt down. I find the hunt a great cloudy night activity and I learn a lot in the process As a retired university prof I'm all for learning. Now to get back to the image.

Normally I find a fair agreement between redshift and non-redshift distance measurements. Not this time. In the case of NGC 0521, the non-redshift measurement has it only about half as distant as the redshift measurement does. I'm going with the redshift as being more likely reasonable as nothing else in the image is at that distance while the redshift fits the NGC 0533 group. If correct the galaxy is nearly 190,000 light-years across. That makes it a huge spiral. If the closer distance of 110 million light-years is right it is just under 100,000 light-years across. While that would make its size more reasonable papers seem to call it an immense spiral which fits the larger size and distance. One source I saw says it has a Low Luminosity Active Galactic Nucleus (LLAGN) though NED didn't mention this. NGC 0533 has only a redshift measurement for its distance of 240 million light-years which results in a size of 275,000 light-years. One paper says of it "We detect no features in this galaxy." These are two huge galaxies. Both were discovered by William Herschel on October 8, 1785. I expected one or both to be in one or both of the Herschel 400 programs but they aren't in either. That really surprised me.

I calculate a projected distance between the two at about 1 million light-years. It's likely at least some of the redshift difference is real and they aren't this close. I'd expect to see some deformation if they were really that close for any significant period of time.

Also confusing as to distance is a quasar or AGN1 object between the two galaxies. NED has two different redshift values for it both by the same astronomer! One is z=1.56 and the other z=0.75 putting it either 9.53 or 6.61 billion light-years distant. While neither are listed as being photographic redshift estimates the lack of significant digits would indicate these are photographic redshifts. These can be hard to determine. It appears there may have been two solutions to the data. This is one reason I usually mark such quasars as quasar candidates as often they turn out to be blue stars in our galaxy once a spectroscopic redshift is determined. Not knowing enough to tell what category it belongs in I've just listed NED's data rather than try to pass judgment on this one.

Also in the image to the left side is the center of the Abell 0189 galaxy cluster. One of Abell's lesser galaxy clusters. It has less than 30 members that fit its magnitude limit covering a one-degree circle. Its distance is listed at 431 million light-years. I see only a couple galaxies at about that distance in my image. The cluster is morphology class III indicating it has little to no core galaxy or galaxies.

While not a member of the Abell 0189 cluster centered within my image, some claim the two and a few others may be members of the nearby Abell 194 cluster whose distance NED shows to be 230 million light-years. The center of the cluster is about 3 degrees to the south. NED lists its radius at a bit under 2 degrees. So this pair is a degree beyond the edge as defined by NED. Not knowing how NED decides the edge of a cluster I can't agree or disagree with this position.

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




http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/NGC/NGC521__NGC0533/NGC0521__NGC0533L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/NGC/NGC521__NGC0533/NGC0521__NGC0533L4X10RGB2X10CROP150.JPG
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/NGC/NGC521__NGC0533/NGC0521__NGC0533L4X10RGB2X10ID.JPG

Related Designations for NGC0521

NGC0522

FGC 163/NGC 522 is a flat galaxy in central Pisces about 110 million light-years away by redshift. Other measurements have a mean value of 130 million light-years and median value of 110 million light-years, a rather good agreement. NED lists it as a Sc galaxy while the NGC Project says Sbc:. It is about 80,000 light-years in diameter but less than 11,000 light-years thick. It was discovered by Heinrich d'Arrest on September 25, 1862. There's a tiny, most likely very distant, edge on spiral on its east side. It isn't listed at NED or SIMBAD for some reason. so I can't tell you anything about it.

There are quite a few other galaxies in the image but few are at its approximate distance. IC 101 is its closest neighbor at a redshift of 96 million light-years. It is classed as Sb? and was discovered by Stephane Javelle on December 2, 1893. I calculate its length to be about 45,000 light-years. While appearing only slightly smaller IC 102 is actually much large as it is about 6 times more distant at 630 million light-years. That makes it about 146,000 light-years across, over three times the size of IC 101. It is listed as S0/a and was also discovered by Javelle the same night as he found IC 101. A couple other galaxies have a similar redshift that are therefore all likely members of the same local group.

I've identified all galaxies with redshift data and the brighter ones without such data and a catalog entry that isn't just its sky coordinates. Most only are known by their coordinates and most of the others are only in very obscure catalogs.

The image also contains 8 asteroids, all quite faint which caused me to stretch the image a bit more than I'd normally do to bring them out better. Only one has a common name LOFAR. Yes, it is named for the radio telescope. Its naming citation reads: "LOFAR (LOw-Frequency ARray), a novel radio telescope, proposed by Leiden astronomer George Miley and inaugurated in 2010, consists of tens of thousands of individual low-frequency antennas, distributed over north-western Europe, with its core region in the Netherlands."

But it is the asteroid (288112) 2003 WA60 that interests me. Note how the first half of its trail is a lot brighter than the last half. I can't see that as conditions as the other asteroid trails don't show this wide variance. My first thought was the first half of the trail was atop a distant galaxy or maybe a pair of stars. But this field was taken by the Sloan telescope which goes deeper than I do and it shows nothing at this location. Thus the trail really did have this variation. It seems too sudden for even a highly elongated asteroid to turn from sideways to end on but that's about all I can think of. I suppose a brilliant albedo feature than suddenly went into shadow could do this but I've not heard of any asteroid having such a feature. I'm rather lost for ideas what could cause this. Too further complicate the issue (211946) 2004 XF92, to the lower left, does just the opposite and, even vanishes for part of its trail. The first half of its trail in the second frame is very dim. For the last half, it comes up brighter but not to where it was in the first frame. It then stays at this brightness in the third and fourth frames. These are behaving very strangely indeed.

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

Related Designations for NGC0522

NGC0536

Hickson 10 is a group of 4 galaxies located a bit over 200 million light-years from us in Andromeda 3.5 degrees east-southeast of Beta. It consists of the 4 NGC galaxies 529, 531 536 and 542. Redshift measurements show LEDA 169778 and CGCG 521-029 as likely members of the same group but then it isn't such a "compact group" as Hickson describes for his list. On the annotated image I also have included in parentheses the Tully Fisher distance determination when available.

NGC 536 and NGC 531 appear likely an interacting pair in the group as both show large plume-like drawn out spiral arms typical of near misses. The arms of NGC 536 appear severely warped as well. Neither, however, show a strong blue color. Both seem to have plenty of dust and gas from which new stars are often triggered by such interaction. It could be this is hidden behind all the dust and gas. NGC 536 does have a very active nucleus as shown by its AGN status. This often indicates a galaxy that has been severely shaken up by interaction. NGC 529 has an extensive, somewhat blue halo much as if it is the result of a rather recent merger though I found nothing in the literature on this.

NGC 529 was discovered by John Herschel on November 17, 1827. NGC 531 and NGC 542 were discovered by R. J. Mitchel on October 16, 1855. NGC 536 was discovered by William Herschel on September 13, 1784. It isn't in either of the Herschel 400 programs.

Only 14 galaxies in the field were even listed in NED. Being close to the "Zone of Avoidance" this region isn't as well mapped as regions further from the plane of our galaxy and its obscuring dust. All are listed by catalog name on the annotated image. Redshift, when available, is shown. If there are any quasars in the image they are still to be discovered or at least listed in NED's database. One asteroid was caught at the top center of the frame. As was common for much of 2012 and now in 2013 transparency was poor as indicated by how weakly the asteroid appears. Normally a 19th magnitude asteroid would be much stronger.

The "brilliant" 6th magnitude star HD 8673 near the bottom right of center created a huge reflection issue sending all sorts of them across the image. That made for a processing nightmare. I'll admit I cheated on this one. I gave up removing the reflections and saved the stars and galaxies creating a false background for about 60% of the image. Extensive gradient removal over the rest results in a somewhat fake looking background but it beat the reflections I was dealing with.

HD 8673 turns out to be a star with a known planetary candidate HD 8673b. In dealing with the reflections its intensity has been greatly reduced in this image until it appears only slightly brighter than other much dimmer stars in the image An unfortunate side effect of my reflection removal technique.

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

Related Designations for NGC0536

NGC0600

My target for this image was NGC 615 on the far left in central Cetus. I moved it left when I saw NGC 600, a rather interesting low surface brightness barred spiral could be fit into the frame. The core and bar of it are quite bright but the arm structure rather faint without much fine detail but for all the star clouds on the faint arm to the south that seems pulled away from the rest of the galaxy.

NGC 615 has a strange dust lane that cuts right across the inner spiral structure. This makes it rather similar to NGC 210 I posted back on September 28, 2010. In the case of NGC 615, the dust lane is far more obvious, however, but doesn't make an "X". NGC 615 is seen more edge on which might make the dust more obvious.

NGC 600 was discovered by William Herschel on September 10, 1785 but isn't on either Herschel 400 observing list. NGC 615 was also discovered by William Herschel. He found it on January 10, 1785, 8 months before finding nearby but fainter NGC 600. NGC 615 is on the original Herschel 400 observing list. My notes from a fair but humid night using my 10" f/5 reads: "Very small, faint round galaxy. Seems to have a starlike nucleus surrounded by a bright ring located half way to the edge of the halo. Very interesting but hard to see due to the small size and need for averted vision." Odd I said round when it is very oval. Seems I wasn't seeing but the red portions of the galaxy and missed the faint outer blue arms entirely. I needed 150x to see it very well the notes indicate. I made no mention of NGC 600 so like Herschel likely missed it at the time.

Both galaxies have a redshift that puts them about 70 million light-years distant and thus likely part of the same local group. Their size is similar at about 71,000 light-years in diameter. If they are at about the same distance then their separation is only about 620,000 light-years making them much closer to each other than we are to M31.

The field isn't well documented in NED. The only other galaxy in the field to have a redshift is the dwarf galaxy KDG 007. While its redshift is almost the same as NGC 615 indicating it may be a satellite of it the only non-redshift measurement puts it much closer. I can't follow the reasoning used for this however as it assumes this dwarf is a member of the NGC 1313 galaxy group. Now that group is nearly two hours east and almost 60 degrees south of the dwarf! Again that famous Asian astronomer Sum Ting Wong may have struck again. But since NED includes that reference I included it.

6th magnitude HD 9562 was moved out of the field at the top. Even so, it cast a huge blaze of light into the frame that was a pain to deal with. Fortunately, this is a rather sparse field for faint distant galaxies so I doubt it cost much detail to deal with it.

Two rather bright asteroids and 3 faint ones photobombed the frame. See the annotated image for details. If not for them I'd not have made the annotated image due to lack of data on this field.

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

Related Designations for NGC0600

NGC0609

NGC 609 is a type II3r open cluster in Cassiopeia about 13,000 light-years distant according to WEBDA. They put its age at about 1.7 billion years making it a rather old cluster and thus explaining its lack of bright blue stars which have long since died. It shows only about 0.35 magnitudes of reddening not enough to redden it to any appreciable degree. Thus its age is the main reason for its unusually red color. It also apparently has a rather high mass to have held together for so long.

Being that we are looking through the galaxies plane and thus its disk its no wonder the field lacks any galaxies. NED lists only two in my field, both very faint that appear nearly the same as a faint star. No redshift data is available for either so I didn't prepare an annotated image.

The cluster was discovered by Heinrich d'Arrest on August 9, 1863. As it is a rather obvious cluster I find it rather odd that it wasn't discovered earlier. Though it is very faint and likely almost unresolved in the telescopes of the day. It certainly isn't as easy a visual target as my image would make it appear.

I'm not happy with the color as the blue channel was wiped out by smoke. I need to take the blue without the smoke screen rather than push it to unreasonable levels as I did here. Another for the reshoot list.

Many atlases give a position a minute or sometimes more east of the cluster's center including the NGC itself and WEBDA.

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

Related Designations for NGC0609

NGC0660

IC 148 is a rather small blue, warped, disk galaxy in Pisces only 22 minutes of arc from the far more famous polar ring galaxy NGC 660. Just too far for me to put them in the same FOV. They do have similar redshift so are likely related and maybe even interacting. It may be the cause of the warping of this galaxy. The distance to it is rather uncertain. Even APOD won't try to pin that down for NGC 660 saying only that it is over 20 million light-years from us. Redshift puts IC 148 at 22 million light-years while a single Tully Fisher estimate says 35 million light-years. I tend to favor the larger value mainly due to its angular size. If the 22 million light-year figure is used the galaxy is only 22,400 light-years across. That seems small to me. The larger distance makes it 35,600 light-years across, a more reasonable size. If its angular separation from NGC 660 is a good indicator of their real separation, that is they really are at the same distance from us, then they are only 139 thousand light-years to 221 thousand light-years apart. That's quite close. This, of course, is the minimum distance between them, the actual distance could be much greater since neither has a good distance estimate.

NED classifies it in one place as Sc(f) and Im another. The latter could be consistent with the smaller size and nearer distance while the former gives it about the same size as M33 which fits its classification better. In case you are wondering the (f) is from the Yerkes classification system and means it has prominent F type stars. This helps explain its rather blue color.

The annotated image shows a surprising number of quasars and quasar candidates (labeled UvES in the annotated image). The one asteroid is identified in the annotated image.

After writing the above I checked my image of NGC 660 taken in 2009 using generation 1 filters rather than generation 2 used for the IC 148 image. There was a small amount of overlap. My processing methods have changed greatly since 2009 so it is processed much differently. Rather than take the time to reprocess the 2009 image I did a quick rework to sort of match the two into one large 2705x2464 mosaic at 1" per pixel. Due to the small overlap of only stars the processing differences aren't very noticeable. It does show the relationship between these two galaxies. To do it right I need to retake NGC 660 with today's optical train (even that has changed slightly) and process them the same. I don't see that happening however. Thank goodness for RegiStar that managed to match the two with only a very small overlap between the two and slightly different image scales and distortions at the edges where they meet.

Data for the IC 148 image:
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME
Data for the NGC 660 image is the same but for some reason the blue channel used three 10 minute images rather than 2 used for the other color channels.

Related Designations for NGC0660

NGC0664

The NGC 664 galaxy group is located in the southeastern corner of Pisces about 240 million light-years distant. NED says there are 6 in the group but I find only 4 in my image at the right distance. I was unable to determine where the other two are. The four I imaged are NGC 664, IC 150, PGC 006329 and tiny NSA 130250. NGC 664 is almost 100,000 light-years across while NSA 130250 is only 10,000 light-years long. NGC 664 was discovered by John Herschel on September 24, 1830. IC 150 was found by Stephane Javelle on December 5, 1893.

The asteroid (2682) Soromundi photobombed my image. While the Minor Planet Center said the citation info was unavailable being behind a copyright I found the copyright info in Google Books. It reads "Discovered by E.F Helin and S.J. Bus June 28, 1979. Named by Helin in honor of the Los Angeles Chapter of the YWCA 'sisters of the world'." Google translates the word Soromuni in Latin to "sisters of the world". When I simply "googled" the term I got back dozens of references to a lesbian chorus by that name. I had to dig many pages down to find the Google Books reference.

This field is only 6 degrees north of the ecliptic so I expected many asteroids but only the one appeared. Though a plane with its bright lights and strobe flew through one of my two red frames it was easy to remove using the other red frame for that part of the color data. That's why I take two unless I'm around to see the frames as they come in.

Since the frame is near the Zone of Avoidance there was little information on the field. Most galaxies carried only positional names, often from very obscure catalogs. So most are just noted with a G for galaxy along with its redshift distance.

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



http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/NGC/NGC0664_IC0150_PGC6329/PGC6329L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/NGC/NGC0664_IC0150_PGC6329/PGC6329L4X10RGB2X10CROP.JPG
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/NGC/NGC0664_IC0150_PGC6329/PGC6329L4X10RGB2X10ID.JPG

Related Designations for NGC0664

NGC0669

NGC 669 is a rather red and dead spiral in northwestern Triangulum. In fact, the top third of the image is in Andromeda. It's located on the southwest corner of the Abell 262 galaxy cluster the core of which is sometimes known as "The Fath". Its redshift distance of 200 million light-years is within the range of redshifts seen for this cluster which is put at 220 million light-years. Tully-Fisher measurements put its distance at 250 million light-years but some of the papers indicate they had to make some rotation rate fudges due to a weak signal from Ha sources so these readings may be off. The red and dead idea is supported by cold hydrogen data from radio telescopes. The galaxy is surrounded by a very large but very diffuse cloud of cold hydrogen. Hot hydrogen as evidenced by H alpha emission is also very weak. It appears much of its star building hydrogen has been thrown out of the galaxy. This could explain the lack of current star formation. The galaxy isn't distorted as if it had a major interaction to cause this but it may have been so long ago things are back to normal now but for the lack of star formation. Some of the red color may also be due to dust kicked out of the galaxy that is reddening it. Though I found nothing on this, just an idea I had. It also has an odd dust cloud along the rather dense dark lane which may be left over from some long-ago interaction. If part of the Abell cluster it doesn't lack for candidates now well out of my field. The galaxy was discovered by Édouard Stephan on November 28, 1883. The galaxy is huge for a spiral with a diameter of about 185,000 light-years by my measurement. If the Tully-Fisher determination is right then it is 230,000 light-years across. Another reason to doubt that measurement.

The galaxy is listed in the 2 micron flat galaxy catalog. While not seen edge on the core region does give the appearance of being very flat. I suppose that is what allowed it to make the catalog as there's no optical evidence of a central bulge, just a very small and not all that bright core. Usually, the bright core would be much larger and hide much of the far side of the galaxy due to its bulge. Thus if seen edge on this would likely be a very thin galaxy. Two other anonymous thin galaxies are in the image. One to the northwest and another possibly more distant one to the north-northeast.

To the southeast is the double galaxy of UGC 01258. They appear connected by a tidal stream and neither has much structure left, if they had any, to begin with. The southern and brighter part has a redshift that puts it at 190 million light-years so it too could be part of the Abell 262 cluster and likely related to NGC 669. Oddly the fainter northern galaxy is at the position the PGC has for this pair. I'd have expected the position to be between the two as it is for the UGC 1258 designation. The pair cover a projected distance of about 70,000 light-years. Assuming each ends in the middle of the tidal stream the northern galaxy is 28,000 light-years in size and the lower 42,000 light-years across.

The only other galaxy in the frame with redshift distance is [WGB2006] 014400+34320_e off the northeastern end of NGC 669 but at a distance of 1.3 billion light-years. It is about 80,000 light-years in size. I suspect several more of the galaxies in the image such as LEDA 3088490 is a member of the Abell 262 cluster but without redshift data that is only a guess.

The night I took this was very hazy causing nasty halos around even the fainter stars. I tried reducing the halos but that seems to have caused some stars to elongate in various directions probably due to where the haze halo was the brightest. I'm not sure it was worth the effort.

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

Related Designations for NGC0669

NGC0674

NGC 697/674 is a spiral galaxy in northwestern Ares about 130 million light-years distant by redshift and 110 by the consensus of 17 non-redshift measurements at NED. It is considered a member of the NGC 691 galaxy group which average about the same redshift as that of this galaxy. Still, it is hard to argue with a rather nicely grouped non-redshift measurements that have a standard deviation of only 9 million light-years. So I'll split the difference and say 120 million light-years. That makes its size nearly 200,000 light-years including faint plumes my horrid night barely showed. Unfortunately, they don't show in the color image. Using the size seen in the posted image it is still very large at a bit under 160,0000 light-years across. So this is a major galaxy. While I've not yet taken NGC 691 its angular size in catalogs is smaller than NGC 697-74. NGC 697 is classified as SAB(r)c: by NED and the NGC Project and Seligman. It's unusual when those three agree though Seligman uses a question mark for a colon they two mean essentially the same, a bit of doubt in the classification as a c arm structure galaxy. Not surprising given the oblique angle we see it at. For a hint of the plume, especially on the east side see http://cseligman.com/text/atlas/ngc674wide.jpg.

So why two NGC listings. Seems William Herschel discovered it on September 15, 1784, got its position correct and earned the NGC 697 entry from Dreyer when he assembled what became the NGC catalog. Then on December 2, 1861, yes, over 77 years later Henrich d'Arrest recorded a galaxy 2 minutes of arc west of NGC 697 which he claimed to have viewed the same night. But there's nothing he could have seen at that position. Also, his description is a perfect match, including the position of a 9th magnitude star in relation to the galaxy, for NGC 697. Thus the two are now considered one and the same by nearly all catalogs. You can read a bit more on this mix-up at the NGC Project webpage for either NGC 697 or NGC 674. While Herschel discovered it the galaxy isn't in either of the H400 observing programs.

The night I took this image had awful seeing and even worse transparency due to a nasty haze layer. Sometimes these stabilize seeing but not this night. The 6th magnitude star in the lower left corner SAO 74966, a double star whose combined light is that of a G3III star so virtually white with a tinge of red, gave me fits sending a bright gradient completely across the frame. Combined with the loss due to lousy transparency this image is about 2 magnitudes short of my normal efforts with an FWHM of 4" rather than the 2.5" I often obtain for stars. Thus much detail in the galaxy was lost. Taken in late January 2017 it was my last January or February image. It is now well into March with a bright moon as I write this with still no imaging. Worst winter I've ever had for imaging.

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

Related Designations for NGC0674