NGC2251

NGC 2251 is a type III2p open cluster in Monoceros about 2 degrees southwest of the much better known Cone Nebula and 3.5 degrees north of the Rosette Nebula. It gets lost in the many objects in the area that attract imagers. As a result, there aren't many amateur images of this cluster. Also, it is a rather spread out, elongated cluster. WEBDA puts its age at just under 270 million years. Middle age for a cluster. It is about 4300 light-years away. Its stars are still somewhat blue though the brightest blue stars have long since died. It is little reddened so stars with some blue still predominate. Though some images of it so push the color saturation they appear either gaudy blue or red. My visual log of several observations of it don't mention color at all.

Is its elongated shape natural or is it already showing signs of disruption from galactic forces? I didn't find anything on this. It was discovered by William Herschel on December 26, 1783. It is in the original H400 observing program. My log from that with my 10" f/5 at 60X on an average night reads "Large arrowhead shaped open cluster which comes to a sharp point. It points to the southeast. It is easy as a splotch in binoculars or even a small finder. Likely good in a very small scope but rather lost in my 10" due to background stars."

I wasn't going to make an annotated image but then two very faint asteroids were in it that would be hard to find without my pointing them out. They show how poor my night was. Obviously a lot worse than I realized. Neither can be followed its full distance. The brighter starts almost like there's a star at the lower left end of the trail but that's just that within less than a minute conditions went down hill fast. According to the Minor Planet Center the trail should be about 25% longer than seen in my image. The fainter one to the upper left fared even worse with its trail fading out after only about 40% of its length. The last part is very fuzzy so was probably behind a cloud but why didn't the other one get fuzzy? The mysteries of imaging at work. Color data was hurt by these clouds to the point that I took much of it nearly a month later. I should have totally reshot it that night but then I'd have missed these asteroids -- but were others in the field? I didn't check.

3 or 4 faint star-like galaxies can be seen through the gunk. None had redshift data and were harder to see than the asteroids so I didn't annotate them. They are bright enough they should have been easy but not under these conditions. There was a lot of haze over the brighter stars due to the conditions. I processed most of it out. That likely reduced the brightness range of the stars. Another reason I should have retaken it in full. I should mention that while 4 of the 6 color frames were taken nearly a month later than the luminance and other two color frames (one blue and one red) it is a testament to the accuracy of the Paramount. NONE of the 10 frames were aligned. Due to the fixed mirror and accuracy of the mount and polar alignment and too few frames to dither I often have no need to align unless the temperature was different. That changes image scale requiring RegiStar to resize rather than align.

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

Related Designations for NGC2251

NGC2264

Each time I clean the hard drive I find old files that have been lost, misplaced and forgotten. This one dates back several years. It was taken with my old filters that had nasty blue halos even on red stars. Not knowing how to deal with them in this image I seem to have filed it in an obscure folder and it was gone. I really should redo this one with far more time and with my new filters that don't have the halo problem. But with this winter's horrid weather that didn't happen. I'll have to go with this salvaged image.

The Cone Nebula is part of a larger nebula involved with a star cluster. The combination is known as NGC 2264 though some say it only applies to the northern part. The cluster, most of which is outside this image is sometimes known as the Christmas Tree Cluster due to its shape. The combination is thought to be about 2500 to 2600 light-years away depending on which source you use. It is located in the constellation of Monoceros which is a unicorn. it was discovered by William Herschel on January 18, 1784. It is in the first H400 program. My log entry with my 10" f/5 at 60x on March 16, 1985, a typical dark sky night, reads; "Nebula best seen around a star on the eastern edge fading away so gradually its edge was impossible to see. I've never been able to see the star cluster as a Christmas tree. Maybe I need to look on December 25 rather than in March."

The nebula also extends north becoming mostly a reflection nebula. This part is commonly known as the "Fox Fur Nebula". Though I don't know how it got its name, it's texture might have had something to do with it. The two are too far apart for me to do in one frame. The two images were taken in 2006 for the Fox Fur Nebula and 2009 for the Cone Nebula. My technique in 2006 both in taking and in processing the data was very flawed. Nor did I take either with the idea of combining them into a mosaic. So while there is a bit of overlap there's just no way to combine them so I'm displaying them separately on this page.

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

Fox Fur Nebula data is the same but for exposure times. L=9x5', RGB=3x5'. 5 minute exposures don't control read noise as well as 10 minute ones do.

Related Designations for NGC2264

NGC2266

NGC 2266 is another Herschel 400 open cluster. William Herschel discovered it on December 7, 1785 with his trusty 20' reflector with an 18.7" mirror. It is located in Gemini 1.8 degrees north of Mebsuta (Epsilon Geminorum). It is about 5 minutes of arc across and 11,000 light-years distant. WEBDA puts its age at 630 million years though APOD and other sources say 1 billion years. Either way, it is a rather unusually old open cluster. It spends most of its time well above or below the galaxy's plane so escapes a lot of the tidal forces that rip apart much younger clusters. The red stars in it give away its age as does the lack of really blue stars. Being well above the plane of the galaxy it is only reddened about 0.1 magnitude.

My notes from March 16, 1985 of it visually in my 10" f/5 at 60x reads; "Large triangular shaped open cluster. A bright slightly curved line of brighter stars defines one side of the triangle. If the brighter stars are ignored the cluster is nearly circular." I assume that curved line is the line of mostly red stars that ends at the white star at the southwestern tip. In my image, it looks triangular no matter if you leave out the brighter stars or not. Otherwise, it seems to fit my visual description quite well.

The bright white star at its southwest edge is listed in The Sky as being 1160 light-years away so is unrelated to the cluster. Many images I found of this cluster online show it as rather blue but it came out virtually white with my color balance. This bothered me until I looked it up and found it is a G0 star. Those are virtually white. So where do so many come up with a blue tint to it?

There are a few galaxies around it. Only one had a redshift listed at NED and that one is a flat galaxy! I've noted it and all galaxies listed in NED even if the rest had no magnitude or distance values. Some were UV sources and very blue. Without spectral data, they may be quasars as they seem to have starlike point spread functions.

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

Related Designations for NGC2266

NGC2282

NGC 2282/IC 2172/vdB 85 is a reflection nebula with an embedded star cluster seen mostly in infrared light. Actually, SIMBAD classifies it as a reflection nebula, NED as a star cluster under the NGC 2282 name and an HII region under the entry BSF 54 (Blitz+Fich+Stark HII regions). NED says IC 2172 doesn't exist. The NGC Project lists it as a reflection nebula under both the IC and NGC numbers. Only SIMBAD lists it as vdB 85. The Sky 6 mislocates vdB 85 about 11 minutes east of NGC 2282! It is located on Monoceros and thought to be about 5500 light-years distant. The cluster contains about 100 stars, a few of which are pre-main-sequence stars. It is thought to be about 5 to 10 million years old. You can read more about this object at http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1997AJ....113.1788H . The nebula was discovered by Edward Barnard on March 3, 1886.

Like much of my imaging for 2012 and 2013 this one was severely damaged by clouds and poor seeing. The color data was especially thin. It is equal to only about 2 minutes of normal color data per channel rather than my normal 20 thanks to the clouds. I tried several times for better data but was thwarted each time. For that reason, much of the emission features around one of the field stars were lost. It had some interesting wings that didn't survive the clouds. I'll try again in 2014 if the weather ever improves (still rotten as I type this). Edit: Never was retaken. Still, this is a rarely imaged nebula that should get a lot more attention than it is given so am putting this out hoping those with better skies will give it a try. Note a check of Tom Davis' vdB site lists it as still to be imaged. http://www.tvdavisastropics.com/astroimages-1_00008e.htm I don't know why it gets such little respect.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' (one very poor) RGB=2x10' (all very poor), STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2282

NGC2290

This is an image of the compact galaxy group WBL 126/UZC-CG 050 which is about 240 million light-years away in the northwest corner of Gemini. It is composed of 5 NGC galaxies, all quite red in color. Before I researched this group I considered several of them to be red spirals though it turns out all but one are classified as S0 or elliptical much to my surprise. I'll take them in NGC order.

NGC 2288/IC 2173 is the smallest and faintest of the group. NED fails to classify it while the NGC Project says E. I do agree with this one. It was found February 22, 1849 by William Parsons' assistant George Stoney with his 72" scope.

NGC 2289 to the north of 2288 is classified as S0 by both NED and the NGC Project. Again this seems reasonable. It was found by William Herschel on February 4, 1793 with his 18.7" reflector.

NGC 2290 is classified as (R)SAa by NED and simply Sa by the NGC project. How they ignore the ring I don't know. It too was found by William Herschel also on February 4, 1793. It is rather red for an Sa galaxy.

NGC 2291 to the north of the first three is shown as SA(0)^0^: by NED indicating it is rather uncertain of this while the NGC Project says S0. I find it more Sa though its lack of dust might move it into the SA0 realm. Still, it has a faint but easily seen spiral pattern thanks to being seen nearly face-on. It too was found by William Herschel but years earlier on January 22, 1827 using the same 18.7" reflector. I assume he missed the other two as his field of view was very restricted. They may not have been in his field of view. None of those discovered by William Herschel are in either H400 program.

NGC 2294 is the last member of the group and classed E6: by the NGC project and NED. At least they seem uncertain. I see an S0 galaxy with a prominent ring. How this is overlooked I can't fathom. Again it is rather red for a ring spiral. I have to wonder if this somehow is part of the reason for the classification. To me, it is a disk galaxy seen rather strongly tilted toward being seen edge-on which gives it the outline of an E6 elliptical but not the 3D structure of such a galaxy. It was discovered by the William Parsons' assistant, George Stoney, on February 22, 1849 with his huge 72" scope. Was it too faint for Herschel's scope?

While three of these were discovered by William Herschel none are in either of the two Herschel 400 lists of the Astronomical League's observing program.

There's a rather odd blue galaxy near the top of my image, KUG 0647+336 which NED calls simply a Spiral. A note at NED, however, says it has a blue partial ring. I can't seem to see the ring nor do I see a spiral pattern though it does appear to be a disk galaxy and is blue. It seems to have several huge blue star clusters in it but I see no pattern to them or much else about the galaxy other than it has an obvious core. Seems a rather peculiar S0 galaxy to me. Unfortunately, NED has no redshift data on any but the 5 NGC galaxies so I don't know if it is a distant or nearby galaxy.

A rather odd flat galaxy is near the bottom of the frame left of center. It only made the 2 Micron survey's flat galaxy rules, however. Still, it looks darned flat to me. It seems to have a very off-center core which could indicate it is a "sloshed" galaxy. Another spiral galaxy is just to its east. I have no idea if they are related and if they are, did the other galaxy have anything to do with its missing eastern arm.

Most of the galaxies in the frame aren't listed in NED at all. Even some rather bright ones I have labeled with question marks.

Another flat galaxy is seen at the far right edge of my image mostly off the edge. The portion that is in the frame looks just like an asteroid trail. The galaxy isn't in NED so I can't give it a designation. I have marked it with simply "G" and a line to it showing I didn't miss an asteroid. I was certain it was a new asteroid when I first saw it but looking at the POSS plates saw it is a very flat galaxy. How it missed either of the flat galaxy catalogs I don't know. I wish I'd been a minute of arc further west and picked up the entire galaxy.

But there is an asteroid in the image which I'd likely have missed but for trying to find one at the position of the flat galaxy. It is in the upper right corner and marked on the annotated image. There is a break in the trail as I lost some frames to clouds.

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

Related Designations for NGC2290

NGC2304

NGC 2304 is a type II1p open cluster in between the legs of the Pollux twin of Gemini. WEBDA puts it 13,000 light-years distant. Since it is seen about opposite the core of the galaxy it must be about 38,000 light-years from the galaxy's core. This allows it to see less disruption from our galaxies forces and thus have a good chance for long-term survival. WEBDA puts its age at 800 million years. Long enough most of its really bright massive stars to have long since died. They show it little reddened by dust and gas in our galaxy with a reddening of only 0.1 magnitude. Even at its age, A and F stars survive to give it a rather strong blue color.

The cluster was discovered by William Herschel on December 30, 1783. It is in the original Herschel 400 observing program. My comments from March 16, 1985 with my trusty 10" f/5 at 60 to 120x on an average night reads: "An open cluster that reminds me of M-35's companion, NGC 2158. Unresolved at 60x it was resolved into a mass of 13.5 magnitude and fainter stars at 120x. The cluster may be difficult in a 6" scope." Looking at my image I see the orange star on its southern edge is magnitude 12.8 but all others are 13.5 or fainter. I'm surprised my estimate was so accurate. I'm finding such comments from my mostly visual days to often be wrong.

Quite a few asteroids were in the FITS images but as I processed the image to tone down the fainter background stars all but two were so faint I didn't try to annotate them. You will notice the trail of the brightest has a gap as does the fainter one but the asteroid reappears mostly behind a star so it isn't easily seen. Why the gap? Wish I knew. For some reason after 3 luminance frames, two more were taken but apparently not saved by my system. Since they are numbered all I see is a gap in the numbering. But the gap in the time isn't 20 minutes but 40 minutes indicating 3 frames worth of time was lost. But no imaging was attempted during one of the three. Usually, my system leaves some note about what happened but not this time. Something caused the system to decide two frames were too bad to save and never took a third. Cloud sensor didn't trigger this as it would have left an indication in its log. It's a mystery without a chance for a solution.

Since I needed to point out the fainter asteroid I checked for other objects in the image. All I found was a few galaxies from the 2-micron survey. No magnitude or distance data, just position information. There weren't many so I took a few minutes to annotate them. Only the spiral toward the bottom showed any detail. It shines, according to my measurement at a brilliant 17.5. All the others are quite a bit fainter but being small possibly easier to see visually in a very large telescope.

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

Related Designations for NGC2304

NGC2316

NGC 2316 and NGC 2317 are a pair of overlapping emission nebula in Monoceros about 3,600 light-years from us. Some sources, SIMBAD for example, consider NGC 2317 non-existent others list NGC 2316 as the part around the western star and NGC 2317 the part around the eastern star. In a small telescope, it does indeed seem like two little fuzz patches around those two stars with most of the nebulae not seen. Interestingly SIMBAD lists NGC 2316 as a "Cluster of Stars" rather than a nebula. It uses the designation [FT96] 220.8-1.7 for the HII region and GN 06.57.2 for the reflection component. While a few visual stars that I suppose could be called a star cluster are seen in the nebula it hides hundreds of infrared stars. The IR cluster is listed as NAME NGC 2316 IR CLUSTER by SIMBAD. I found an age of 2 to 3 million years for the stars in this obscured cluster. You can read more about it at: http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-3881/136/2/602/pdf/1538-3881_136_2_602.pdf . The paper is a bit deep but some parts are readable.

There is some debate as to which or both NGC numbers apply to this object. The positions are nearly identical. The first entry, now listed as NGC 2316 by the NGC project was by William Herschell on March 4, 1785. The second entry by the Earl of Rosse (probably really Bindon Stoney working for the Earl) was 66 years later on February 20, 1851. This was recorded as NGC 2317. It would seem their scopes would show the stars involved and nebulosity around them. Two stars are in the brightest part of the nebula. Did one pick one star and the other the other star for their location of the object? Though Lord Rosse (Stoney) seems to have seen these as two objects saying about his find now known as NGC 2316: "makes a close D(ouble) nebula with NGC 2317". This according to the NGC Project which is back up after being down of late. Though since Dreyer gave 2317 as the entry for the Earl (or Stoney) shouldn't that read 2316 rather than 2317? Edit: I went to check this and the NGC Project site is mostly down. What little is up now just equates the two giving the Ross quote.

This rather interesting nebula is surprisingly rarely imaged and then usually only in wide field shots picking up M50 and other nearby objects. This is another object I failed to record why I put it on my list. It is in my log of objects attempted with my 2.4" scope and only saw as two fuzzy stars back in 1957. That might have triggered my interest. I find no other log entry that I ever looked at it. I should remedy that next winter. Edit: It is in the second H400 program and I've put those on my to-do list that fit my image circle as this one does. I just failed to note it at the time.

To be a broken record, this is yet another taken through poor transparency so much is lost due to that. Yet another for the reshoot list if I can find the needed skies. I'm beginning to worry this is becoming the normal weather pattern for the area.

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

Related Designations for NGC2316

NGC2336

NGC 2336 is a beautiful barred spiral 10 degrees from the north celestial pole in Camelopardalis about 100 million light-years from us. It has many nice arm segments that seem to come from a ring-like structure around the end of the bar. The ring seems rather pink in my image, apparently due to many unresolved HII regions. NED classifies it as SAB(r)bc with a Seyfert 2 nucleus. The NGC project says SBc. It has a companion well out of my field to the south, IC 0467. I might have been able to catch both if I'd realized it was there. In any case, they don't appear to be interacting though are at the same distance. For those with wider fields than mine, they would make a good pair as both have a lot of detail. NGC 2336 was discovered by Wilhelm Tempel in 1876.

The reason I missed it is that NGC 2336 wasn't my only target. My other target has been on my Arp-like list for some time. It is PGC 213387 which lies just to the north of NGC 2336. It looks to be a strong candidate for Arp's category for spiral galaxies with a heavy arm. Neither NED nor SIMBAD even list it! Though it does show up in my scope control program, The Sky 6 Pro. Obviously very distant I wasn't able to find much on it. I can't even recall how I came to add it to my Arp-like to-do list. Fields this close to the pole seem to be well outside most galaxy studies. About the only galaxies in NED in this field but for NGC 3226 are entries from the 2MASX catalog of IR sources. None have any distance information so I didn't bother to create an annotated image.

Another reason for imaging this field is that NGC 2336 might be related to NGC 2146. I posted it on September 27, 2012. It is a very messed up galaxy thought by the HST group to be messed up by interaction with some other galaxy. NGC 2336 is the only candidate I could find within 5 degrees of it. While the DSS images of it showed no hint of distortion I had to see if I could see any. Nope, it doesn't appear involved so that still leaves the distortion of NGC 2146 a bit of a mystery unless it is the product of a merger which seems likely to me.

While the image came out rather well, it too suffered from my lousy weather. I needed two months over many nights to get the 9 frames used here. I never did get a second green frame and the one I did get was very poor. I mostly treated this as a pseudo green image though the green is based on weak green data. A process I've had to learn thanks to my conditions of late.

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

Related Designations for NGC2336

NGC2339

NGC 2339 is a nice face-on spiral between the knees of Pollux the eastern twin in Gemini about 110 million light-years away. I measure it at about 75,000 light-years across. To the east is an apparent companion LEDA 143096 with a similar redshift. It is much smaller at 26,000 light-years across. The only other galaxy with redshift data in the image is PGC 020201 at 660 million light-years. It is a core with a ring and a plume to the south. Including the plume, I measure its size at 112,500 light-years across. I assume the plume and ring are due to something it interacted with. North of it is a nice flat galaxy. I couldn't find it in any catalog used by NED or SIMBAD. Some obscure catalog may have it but I didn't check the thousands of these it could be in. It is noted with a question mark.

Notes on NGC 2339 at NED are somewhat contradictory. One says "Suggested as double-barred by Laine et al. (2002). Inspection of WFPC2 F606W and NICMOS2 F110W and F160W images indicates that the nuclear region has both strong dust lanes and star formation; the "bar" detected by Laine et al. appears to be an IR-bright (star-forming?) ring, with at least two bright nuclei inside." While an earlier note without HST help says "The bar is very weak in NGC 2339, and there is no evidence for recent star formation in it." This note also would prefer SBbcII.2 for the classification.

It was discovered by William Herschel on February 22, 1789. It is in the second H400 observing program. Unfortunately, my visual log from that is lost and I made no other notes about it.

Being in the Zone of Avoidance there's little information on this field. I have listed all galaxies NED shows. Many more may be listed in the over 400 EvS objects they list but I can't begin to spend the time to check that many so only show those with a galaxy designation at NED.

Several asteroids are in the image but only 2 made it through the rather lousy transparency of this night. One is right inside the galaxy. For some reason, its trail is only about half the length it should have according to the Minor Planet Center. Also, it is about 6" south of where they put it. Checking online images (not many including the Hubble image which barely shows the area) I see nothing where the trail is in my image. It should be about the same length as the one on the far right edge of the image but isn't. It also fades in the middle which the other doesn't. It's that way in the raw FITS stack so not a processing artifact. The HST image of the western 60% of the galaxy is here https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NGC_2339_hst_06359_96_f606w.png. It is oriented the same as mine but its stars are much tinier.

Seeing and transparency for this image was poor bloating stars due to high clouds. Another that needs a reshoot it likely will not get.

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

Related Designations for NGC2339

NGC2340

NGC 2340 is the largest and brightest member of the WBL 133 galaxy group located about 275 million light-years away in the constellation of Lynx and not far from the far larger Abell 569. The group contains some 13 members though not all are withing my image. I should have moved 2340 from the center to capture more of them but this was taken automatically as I slept so the scope just obeyed my instructions to center on 2340. As with most groups the members are mostly elliptical and S0 galaxies and thus showing the golden color of old stars due to the lack of new star formation. Apparently these galaxies have so interacted with other members of the group that the dust and gas needed for star formation has been stripped from them leaving them to slowly redden and fade away.

The spherical galaxy to the upper left of NGC 2340 is IC 465 and maybe also NGC 2334. Why the "maybe"? Seems there's lots of problems with the visual observations that created the NGC catalog. This is one of them. Since the catalog is numbered in RA order (at the time of the catalog, precession has changed things somewhat since then when looking at galaxies today on opposite sides of the sky) it should be west of NGC 2340 not east. This is the first hint that something may be wrong. For further information I'll refer you to Dr. Corwin's discussion at the NGC catalog. http://www.ngcicproject.org/dss/dss_n2300.asp Scroll down to NGC 2334 and click on the data button then scroll down that window for the lengthy discussion.

The large elliptical near the right edge nearly directly west of NGC 2340 is NGC 2332 or NGC 2330 NED says it is both. Below it is IC 457 which may or may not be NGC 2330. This problem is included in the lengthy discussion of IC 465/NGC 2334 in the above link. Edit: With the NGC project partly in limbo that link is broken use http://ngcicproject.org/gottlieb/n2001-n2500c.txt and find NGC 2330.

I've made an annotated image showing member galaxies as well as a few non member ones. If they are a member no distance is given. If a non member the distance in millions of light-years is appended to the name. Some have no red shift data so are noted with a ? for distance.

There are some other ID problems in this image. IC 462 is just a blue star. Could it be the observer saw the nearby galaxy but got the position of the star by mistake? I can't find anything on this one.

Then there's the blue object I've identified as [VCV2001] J071006.8+500245 at almost 2 billion light-years. NED shows many different catalog entries for it. One, the one I used, says it is a quasar, one of the closest known. Another calls it a galaxy (RX J0710.0+5002 ID) as well as an X-ray source. It's shown as an IR source in the 2MASS catalog (2MASSi J0710068+500246). It is also listed in several radio catalogs. It certainly is using most of the spectrum. Due to its strong blue color, typical of "nearby" quasars I chose to go with the quasar designation.

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

Related Designations for NGC2340