NGC1819

NGC 1819 is an SB0 starburst galaxy in Orion that I've wanted to take for several years. I finally got a chance in December of 2012 but the night was poor for transparency and not so great for seeing. Still, I was able to get a bit of the detail in the very odd core region. The outer faint parts were mostly lost to low transparency which has been a plague here for months. Redshift puts the galaxy some 200 million light-years distant. Study of a type 1A supernova, SN 2005e1, puts its distance at 195 million light-years, very good agreement! At this distance, there aren't many good images around of this one that I was able to find. Best was by John Shuder taken not long before my image. See: http://www.pbase.com/jshuder/image/141511136/large and click on the original size button. His color data wasn't lost in the haze as mine was. I'd wanted to try for some H alpha data on this one due to a note at NED but that wasn't possible in the poor transparency conditions I had that night. I never went back to try again, unfortunately. Here's the note: "NGC 1819. An SB0 galaxy, the H{alpha} image [Fig. 1(c)] reveals a small ring of very bright H II regions in the inner regions, well within the stellar bar. The ring of H II regions is dominated by two bright complexes roughly opposite each other across the ring, and the rest of the ring is filled in by fainter regions. The two bright complexes are sufficiently luminous for this galaxy to be identified as a UV-excess source (Mrk 1194; Markarian et al. 1979). There is no suggestion of any nuclear emission source, nor are any H II regions detected further out in the disk. The bright inner ring resembles what is seen in the anemic SBa galaxy NGC 4314 (Benedict 1980), but NGC 1819 is of an earlier Hubble type and considerably more luminous (M_B_^0^ = 22.1 compared to -18.7 for NGC 4314)."

If the horizontal band in the core is a dust lane then it is highly rotated from where I'd expect it to be. But it might just be an illusion caused by the various, tiny in angular size, structures in the core and not a true dust lane. Either way, it is a very unusual core structure likely related to the starburst activity which may be creating the blobs in the core. So far I've not been able to get an image of the mentioned NGC 4314 which is a much closer galaxy and not nearly as detailed, maybe I can next year. It's too far west for this year. It was discovered on December 26, 1885 by Lewis Swift.

NED has little detail on the many faint fuzzies in the background. Only two of the brighter ones were listed with redshift data. Those were at 1.36 and 1.37 billion light-years so likely related. They are small red blobs to the northwest of NGC 1819. I didn't bother to make an annotated image for only two other galaxies.

The asteroid to the east of NGC 1819 is (44192) 1998 ME2 which the minor planet center predicts was 19.0 magnitude that night. This estimate seems reasonable given my poor transparency.

For those who wish to image this one, note the core detail will require a bit of work to bring out. Most basic DDP or stretch routines will just create a bright blob for the core erasing all but a hint of the detail it contains. It will likely take a lot of work to bring out the detail it contains. I had to process twice, once for everything but the core then another version for just the core then combine the two much as I would when taking long and short exposures of say M42 to bring out the trapezium region. I suppose masks would work just as well but I prefer my method.

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

Related Designations for NGC1819

NGC1931

IC 417 is the "Spider Nebula". It is part of the Spider and the Fly nebula complex. I finally got a chance to image the Fly part, NGC 1931. They are too far apart for me to mosaic the two. I'd need several in the middle. Both are part of the same huge molecular cloud. Each is lit by the intense radiation of the star clusters forming in their respective parts of the cloud. NGC 1931 is the Fly. The spider was an emission nebula but the Fly is both emission (red) and reflective (blue). Some parts are lit by stars not quite hot enough or whose light isn't strong enough to cause the hydrogen to ionize so we see the blue of a reflection nebula. The entire complex, imaged with a wide angle telescope is at: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap061027.html

It was discovered by William Herschel on February 4, 1793 and is in the original H400 program. My entry from February 29. 1984 with my 10" f/5 limited greatly by my viewing from a town of 125,000 reads: "Small sphere next to a star. Appears to be a reflection nebula as the nebula was greatly reduced by the UHC filter. Emission nebulae are enhanced or left unchanged but not reduced by this filter." I don't know what to make of this description. Town lights must have really hurt it. Oddly, I can't find any other log entry of it visually from town or country.

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

Related Designations for NGC1931

NGC1954

NGC 1954 is a galaxy in Lepus I had to image for two reasons. One it is neat, and secondly or maybe primarily I finished building my first telescope in March of 1954 (started in 1953), a 6" f/12 scope which I still have over 60 years later. It turned out to be a superb planetary scope with optics Bob Cox (he did the optics for Mercury and Gemini and edited the Gleanings for ATM's column in Sky and Telescope for years) described as "Approach the eyepiece carefully lest you cut your eye on the image." It started me down this long road. I'm glad NGC 1954 is a very interesting galaxy. The MCG says of it: "Two extremely thin arcs do not appear as spirals, nor as dense rings. They consist of 15 to 20 HII regions." Indeed the outer arcs seem totally unrelated to the spiral structure. Unfortunately, it hasn't been studied that I found so I don't have an explanation for how it looks like it was assembled from parts of 2 different galaxies. Maybe it was, I just don't know. Could the arcs be a "polar ring" like structure? I doubt it but...

It is part of the triple galaxy system of HDCE 0361. The other two members being NGC 1957 and the "red and dead" IC 2132. All have a redshift distance of about 150 million light-years. This system is located at -14 degrees making it very difficult from my latitude. I've had it on my to-do list from day one but no night was good enough to do it justice until I gave up and took it anyway on February 1st. It has been a really cold but cloudy day snowing until after dark. Suddenly the snow stopped. NGC 1954 was barely within one hour of the meridian, my limit at this declination. Without waiting for the scope to cool down I started in on it as this was the best (not great) night for this galaxy I'd had since building the observatory 8 years ago. Since the clouds could return any minute or seeing go bad I took the L data. That resulted in tube currents that turned the bottom of the stars all wonky. It didn't hurt the resolution of the galaxy significantly, however. This low I can only image east of the meridian due to my Meridian Tree that blocks things about 10 minutes before I reach the meridian from the east side and everything for an hour and a half beyond the meridian to the west. Thus I took the color data a different night. seeing was much worse but no tube currents. That meant the wonky points had no color so I blurred the brighter stars on the color image to cover the "points" in the luminance image. Otherwise, those colorless points looked even worse. There are techniques for rounding the stars but I took the easy route and left the "points" in. It never was steady enough to reshoot the luminance as it soon was too far west and lost in the Meridian Tree.

NGC 1954 is classified as SA(rs)bc pec by NED and simply Sc by the NGC project. NGC 1957 is listed as SB(rs:)0- by NED and E by the NGC Project. As a ring structure is seen faintly I'll have to go with NED on this one. IC 2132 is listed at NED as Sa pec: It is an example of what now is known as red and dead galaxies due to their lack of recent star formation. About all the remaining stars are old red stars and a few red giants, the last of the more massive stars. Thus its spiral structure is quite muted. Oddly it seems to have a strong dust lane but for some reason, that isn't forming stars or if it is they are hidden behind the dust. It is a strong IR emitting galaxy as it is listed in the 2MASS survey. That could be due to hot new stars heating dust that emits in the IR part of the spectrum.

NGC 1954 is a huge galaxy. Measuring from the northwestern tip that extends beyond a faint background galaxy to the southeastern tip that seems to turn back on itself, it is 315 seconds of arc long. That makes it some 229,000 light-years in size! Another reason to wonder if this isn't due to the combining of two different galaxies. By comparison, NGC 1957 (should it look like a Chevy?) is only 43,000 light-years across and IC 3132 83,000 light-years in diameter. Large but not unusually so.

Only two other galaxies in the image had redshift data. That put those two far beyond HDCE 0361. Both are shown in the annotated image. A dozen or so galaxies from the 2MASS are also listed at NED, I've noted a couple of them. One is also an X-ray source so likely is hiding something very hot behind its red glow. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything on it. I noted it on the annotated image southwest of NGC 1954. A couple of galaxies that looked interesting to me but were not in NED are marked with question marks. Most of the galaxies in the field didn't have enough IR to make the 2MASS so didn't make it into NED, including one seen at the north end of NGC 1954.

So while NGC 1954 is a very strange galaxy Arp might have included in his Atlas there's just not much at all on the entire field. Maybe someone will eventually study at least NGC 1954.

NGC 1954 was discovered by William Herschel on December 14, 1786. It isn't in either H400 project.
NGC 1957 was discovered by Francis Leavenworth on December 11, 1885.
IC 2132 was discovered by Herbert Howe on February 22, 1898.

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

Related Designations for NGC1954

NGC1985

NGC 1985/Ced 57 was originally classed as a planetary nebula by William Herschel when he discovered it on November 13, 1790. It isn't in either H400 program. Many afterward also considered it a planetary so it is in many planetary catalogs. Today it is classed as a reflection nebula. Still, it shows quite a bit of H alpha pink in my image. I didn't put an Halpha filter on it. Probably should have. The field is full of very faint nebula and one "bright" reflection nebula. vdB 45 is seen around the star HD 245259 in the lower right portion of my image. I moved NGC 1985 off center to pick this one up. It does appear to be a true reflection nebula but oddly it is listed in the galaxy catalogs as UGC 03327 and MCG +05-14-001 and others. Even Zwicky picked it up as a galaxy, UZC J053640.9+315116.

These nebulae are in Auriga west of M37 and south of M36. The entire field seems awash in very faint nebulosity. It would be a good candidate for those who put many hours into an image. Since it contains a vdB nebula I'm hoping Tom Davis will get it imaged with his new toy.

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

Related Designations for NGC1985

NGC2022

NGC 2022 is a multi-shell planetary nebula just east of Orion's head. The Hubble Space Telescope page says it is 5000 light-years distant. I found no other distance estimate for it. I knew it had an inner oval that has some detail but poor seeing this night didn't let it show in my image. Most images show a rather faint outer halo that turned out rather bright cyan in my image. I'm not sure why as most show it more neutral in color. What I didn't expect was hints of a faint shell further out that is separated from the inner shells by a dark space. This is all right at the noise level of my image. Taken under my typical for this year, poor transparency, and with not enough frames it is pretty much lost in the noise. In fact, much of what I show may be noise but I'm quite sure there is something there. I see hints of it in several online images. Seems no one gives this one the time needed to bring it out.

There is a star embedded in the inner ring that even the Hubble image doesn't seem able to separate out. I could but then I lost the ring so gave up and left it as most show it, lost in the ring itself. The Hubble image is all over the net. The original is at: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9738c9/ . It is pseudo-color using just a V filter (green) and a near IR filter to supply color. I assume the green filter was assigned blue and the IR filter red with a green made from an average of the two. The image has south at the top rather than north as my image is oriented. The star is barely visible (mainly its diffraction spikes) in the upper left corner of the bright ring. Interestingly the ring has its own bright area almost exactly opposite the star. It appears the ring also has its own bright area right where the star is located making it hard to tell if real or not. I vote for a symmetry here and both "corners" being brighter than the rest of the ring. I've included a deep image I found of the nebula showing the faint outer halo in Ha and OIII light. I don't know the source.

It was discovered on December 28, 1785 by William Herschel. My log entry from the first H400 program made on February 29, 1984 on a hazy night in town with my 10" f/5 at 195x trying to cut through the light pollution reads; "Nice green circular blob. Mabe fainter in the center. No stars were seen at its center. UHC filter helped greatly to see detail in this one."

I found nothing else with distance data in the image and no asteroids showed up so no annotated image was prepared.

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

Related Designations for NGC2022

NGC2071

NGC 2071 is a reflection nebula just north of the far more famous M78 some 1300 to 1600 light-years away in Orion.

The nebula houses many protoplanetary disks. One is the smallest known. It is seen by radio not optical telescopes like mine.
http://www.nrao.edu/pr/1998/essdisk/
Information on other young stellar objects can be found in this paper:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1111/1111.5469v1.pdf

While NGC 2071 appears to be part of the same molecular cloud as M78 (poking its head in at the bottom of my image) I'm finding most papers on NGC 2071 saying its distance is 1300 light-years while M78 papers put it at 1600 light-years. It could be due to the measurement of 2071 dating to 1982.

The nebula was first recorded by William Herschel on January 1, 1786. It is in the second H400 observing program.

I wanted more data on this one but after two months of lousy skies in this part of the sky I gave up.

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

Related Designations for NGC2071

NGC2141

NGC 2071 is a reflection nebula just north of the far more famous M78 some 1300 to 1600 light-years away in Orion.

The nebula houses many protoplaNGC 2141 is a rather old open cluster in Orion's Club. It is listed as being 13,100 light-years away by WEBDA. That puts it well beyond the Orion Arm. I'd expect it to be greatly dimmed and reddened by the dust and gas in the Orion Arm but it is listed in WEBDA as being reddened by only a quarter of a magnitude. However, my image shows severely reddened stars and galaxies which surprised me. Many are redder than in any image I've done in the 8 years since going digital. It is listed as being 10 minutes across. At a distance of 13,100 light-years that would make it 38 light-years across. that's large for an open cluster but it is thought to be about 1.7 billion years old giving time for tidal forces to pull away stars which might help to make it larger before the stars are totally ripped away. Due to its age, its stars aren't all that blue with the brightest being dying red giant stars that were blue not long ago.

I like the older clusters for imaging because they do have a good mix of red stars beside the blue ones. Young clusters haven't had time for many, if any, stars to turn into red giants so aren't as colorful.

According to the NGC Project, this cluster was discovered by Edward Barnard of dark nebula fame. Without explanation, they list the "Year of Discovery" as "1882-7." They list no telescope for the discovery either. Another source, Cseligman, says it was found in January 1883. Probably the NGC Project is indicating it was found somewhere between 1882 and 1887 while Cseligman is saying a date within that range. Still, I'd like to know more about this uncertainty.

Conditions were poor when I took the luminance data. I gave up trying for color data. The following night was much better. Assuming the luminance from the previous night was good I just took the color data. In processing this one I found the luminance so poor I just used the color files to make a pseudo luminance image. So the same 6 color files were used twice, once for the color image and once to make a pseudo luminance image. This may help explain why the red stars and distant galaxies are so unusually red.

While I can see quite a few distant galaxies in the image most look like red stars until you examine their PSF (Point Spread Function) in the FITS files. That gives them away as being galaxies. Rather than try and check every red star to see if it was a distant reddened galaxy I just annotated those in NED. All are from the 2MASS galaxy listing. Oddly the faintest one was rather white in color with all the others being quite red. No distance or even magnitude data was available for any of them. With the field on the western edge of the winter Milky Way, it is surprising any galaxies were seen.

14" LX200R @ f/10, Pseudo L=6x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2141

NGC2146

NGC 2146 is a very strange galaxy in Camelopardalis. Its distance by redshift is 40 million light-years. This is often unreliable this close to us. Other methods at NED put it as close as 56 million light-years by the Tully-Fisher method and as far as 90 million light-years by the Sosies method. Splitting the difference gives 73 million light-years. The HST press release on this galaxy says 70 million light-years. A nice round value. How it was determined I don't know.

I've had this one on my to-do list from the beginning but until my Polaris trees were no more it was forever hidden behind them. The mystery is why this galaxy looks as it does. A merger would be the most reasonable idea. For the arms to still be so disturbed most think some remains of the other galaxy should exist but that doesn't seem to be the case. This leaves interaction but there's no obvious candidate for that. NGC 2146A in the upper left corner may be a neighbor but it is much smaller. It looks rather normal. Being smaller it would have taken the brunt of any interaction so is pretty well ruled out. No other galaxies seem to be candidates. I searched out 5 degrees in all directions and nothing with a significant mass turned up that could have done the deed. All were tiny by comparison and looked unharmed but for NGC 2336 which is a nice undistorted spiral. Even without a candidate, the HST page seems to go for the latter explanation. But until someone finds the interacting galaxy I'm favoring the idea it totally consumed the other galaxy tearing it to so many shreds nothing recognizable is left but some plumes. I'd think there'd be a compositional difference however between stars from each galaxy and they'd be still in streams so recognizable. Especially if one of the plumes is from the other galaxy. So far I didn't find any papers noting this. A point in favor of the interacting faction I admit. Sill where is it?

You can read more and see the HST image at: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1134a/ Note their image is false color. Still, it shows many of the HII regions I picked up without the use of an H alpha filter. They are an orange-brown color in the false color HST image rather than the pink color they are in my close to true color image. Only two other galaxies in the image had any redshift data as did one quasar. The pole region isn't covered by the Sloan survey so only brighter galaxies, mostly IR luminous are cataloged. What few of those were I've also noted by name in the annotated image but, of course, without any distance estimate. Several interesting looking galaxies didn't make any catalog NED carries and are noted with just a question mark. On the other hand, The Sky shows a galaxy PGC 142974 above NGC 2146 at 6h 18m 54s +78d 27' 8" at magnitude 18.6. There's absolutely nothing at that position. That's not all that far from one of the question mark galaxies but I can't corrupt its coordinates 6h 19m 51.7" +78d 27m 38" to match. Time to head for that booze cabinet again. This galaxy was discovered in 1876 by August Winnecke, a German Astronomer who found 8 new NGC objects and is co-discoverer of another 3.

Clouds hampered this image. I probably should have retaken it. Instead, I threw out 5 of 8 L image lost to clouds but kept the other three even though 2 were dimmed by clouds. Since I was taking 8 L I took 3 of each color instead of my normal 2. Good thing as clouds nailed them to some extent as well but I didn't throw any out. Instead, I combined all color and the three L images into a pseudo luminance image and used that. Still, color balance was pretty poor as the clouds did a number on all color channels. I hope I managed to get them about right.

14" LX200R @ f/10, Pseudo L=12x10', RGB=3x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2146

NGC2149

NGC 2149 is a somewhat unknown reflection nebula in the southwest corner of Monoceros. Just to its west is smaller, dimmer and less defined vdB 66 around a 10th magnitude star. Steven James O'Mera has this to say about NGC 2149 in his book "The Secret Deep".

Reflection nebula NGC 2149 itself appears to be a giant expanding ring between the high longitude end of the Orion A (molecular) Cloud and the Mon R2 Cloud. In most projections, these clouds appear to be unconnected. However, in a 2008 "Astronomy and Astrophysics" B. A. Wilson (University of Bristol), Thomas M. Dame (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), and colleagues say that their three-dimensional display (with velocity as the third dimension) indicates that the clouds in this region may be connected to form a ring. If NGC 2149's distance is 1300 light-years, they note, the diameter of the ring is about 260 light-years, which corresponds to the expansion age of about 9 million years and may be the result of a supernova."

Note he is not talking about NGC 2149's apparent ring structure but that NGC 2149 may be part of this huge ring that happens to be illuminated by a massive blue star. The apparent ring structure of NGC 2149 is likely due to an illusion. That part of the nebula likely is dark as other parts of the nebula shadow it from our perspective. The parts beyond the "hole" would be further from the illuminating star and toward us so that part does get light from the star. Seeing a 3D object in 2D can easily create such illusions. I found nothing to support this, just that it seems likely to me.

Some sources say vdB 66 is NGC 2149 but Simbad says it is faint blue nebula around the star to the west of NGC 2149. Seligman agrees with Simbad. The nebula was discovered by Édouard Stephan on January 17, 1877.

It's obvious there are far fewer stars on the right side of the image than the left. There's a lot of obscuring matter in that part of the image. Simbad says part of it is TGU H1490 P34. I can't decipher Simbad's size information to determine if it is all of it or just part.

Conditions were very poor when I imaged this and much color data was severely compromised by clouds, especially the red. I need to redo this one from the top. For now, this will have to do.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=7x10' (lots of extinction from clouds) RGB=2x10'x3 (even worse cloud issues), STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2149

NGC2158

NGC 2158 is a very old open star cluster right next to much closer and younger M35. Most put its age at a bit over 1 billion years and its distance at about 16,500 light-years. Most clusters like this are disrupted by tidal forces in our galaxy in only a few million years. It is rare for any to come close to lasting a billion years. Being old it is much redder than a typical open star cluster since all its really massive and bright blue stars have long since blown themselves up. Though a few lesser massive ones still live on for a short time as red giants. This is one of the richest open clusters known. So some are now wondering if it is not really the core of a globular star cluster that has made so many passes through our galaxy most of its stars have been stripped and only the core remains. This could explain a lot if true. Though its much younger age argues strongly against this. For that reason, I don't buy this idea. In any case, it sure is pretty. It is located right "beside" a more normal open cluster easily seen in binoculars at the foot of Gemini, M-35. But it is much much farther away than M-35. A photo of both is at:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap021129.html

It was discovered by William Herschel on November 16, 1784. My log entry from the original H400 program made on February 28, 1984 from town on a hazy night at 195x to cut through haze and light pollution using my 10" f/5 scope reads; "Great even in town. Over 40 stars resolved against a haze of many other unresolved stars. The night is getting a bit better or maybe my familiarity with the object makes the difference! Still, it is much more star-packed when seen under a dark sky."

This is another early image in which I severely overprocessed the stars. Not having easy access to the original data I did what little I could to lessen the issues this created. Since the exposure time is too short even for me and had severe read noise issues it is one I need to retake though don't hold your breath as I have too many not taken at all on my to-do list.

14" LX100R @ f/10, L=6x5' RGB=3x5', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2158