NGC2419

NGC 2419 is a giant, but distant, globular cluster. Globular clusters like M13 and M92 are orbiting our galaxy and are usually no more than 60,000 light years away They orbit out into the halo of our galaxy then dive back through the disk, out the other side and back again to make another loop. But some make bigger loops than others. A very few make extremely large loops. NGC 2419 is one of those. It's so far out it used to be thought it was an intergalactic wanderer. It was thought to be wandering around after escaping from its home galaxy. WRONG. We now know it is, in fact, orbiting about our galaxy but much farther out than most of our satellite galaxies such as the Magellanic Clouds. Distance to this guy is still a bit uncertain but say about 275,000 light years from us and 300,000 light years from the core of our galaxy. If it were placed where M92 or M13 is in our galaxy it would far outshine them and be an easy naked eye object in our sky though we'd still need a telescope to see its stars, a few might be within reach of a pair of binoculars, however. The cluster itself would be as big as the full moon! Outlying stars would make it even larger than that. That's how big and bright this cluster really is. It is now thought to be right at the apex of its orbit, as far from the galaxy as it can get and ready to head back in. So come back in a few hundred millions of years and you might get a much closer view of it, though the earth may be on the wrong side of the galaxy when this happens. Just my luck.

Two really bright stars cast a blue haze over the cluster which I've removed in part. The nearest is SAO60232, an A5 star of magnitude 7.2. That means it is one third as bright as a magnitude 6 star, the dimmest normally considered visible to the naked eye. Beyond it is WDS STF 1118 a wide blue and orange double star (WDS; Washington Double Star catalog). The pair shine at magnitude 7.95 making it one sixth as bright as the dimmest star you can see naked eye. Interestingly the blue star is a close double with a separation of only 0.4" of arc. Way smaller than the blob it makes on my image. So it is really a triple star system. The bright star on the left is 8.0 magnitude and type G0 making it almost the same color as our sun, just a tad bluer. Our sun is a G2 star. Because this was taken through a haze that scatters blue light you do see a blue haze around it as well. That's just the same as the sun making our sky blue even though it isn't really blue. The haze scatters blue light more than other colors giving it a blue color. This was taken early in my digital imaging career when I didn't have the tools to deal with haze I have today. I need to reprocess this one but there are hundreds that could benefit from reprocessing and I just don't have the time so this will do for now.

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

Related Designations for NGC2419

NGC2420

NGC 2420 is an open cluster in Gemini not far from the far more famous Eskimo Nebula. It is another Herschel 400 object I picked up. It was discovered by William Herschel on November 19, 1783 using his 18.7" reflector. In looking this one up I found this is about all the various sources I found agree on. Even the visual description varies greatly. One using a 12" Dob said it was mostly a smudge that became more obvious if he moved the scope -- a common way of enhancing faint visual objects. His drawing shows only the bright orange stars and none of the fainter blue ones. Yet my log says: "Tight, rich cluster... It is a good object well worth the side trip when looking at NGC 2392". And I was using a 10" scope. Things get worse when looking at other factors. Various sources put it at 7 to 10 thousand light-years away. One says it is in the Perseus Arm of the galaxy, another that it lies 3000 light-years above the plane of the galaxy so wouldn't be in any arm of the galaxy. Its age is said to be 1.1 billion years in WEBDA but a press release by the NOAO ( http://www.noao.edu/outreach/press/pr02/pr0204.html ) puts its age as 1.7 billion years. Either way, it is unusually old for an open cluster. These are normally torn apart after much less time by tidal forces in the galaxy's disk. So the age, either of them, support the idea it is well above the plane of the galaxy. Of course, it will have to dive through the plane and spend some time below the plane as well but if its orbit carries it well above or below the plane then such trips would be few aiding its longevity. The NOAO release says its stars have the same metal content as the sun but they are younger. Also, its location is very odd for having the necessary ingredients to even form a cluster let alone one with this metal content which may mean it formed in the disk and somehow got its orbit changed. Could this mean it formed in some galaxy ours has cannibalized? That might explain its odd orbit but then other pieces of that galaxy should be evident and I see no mention of that. Lots more work is in order here!

The field has several "bright" and interesting galaxies but only two have redshift data. They appear to be related as they are less than a minute of arc apart and have almost the same redshift values. The rest have no redshift data. I annotated the brighter ones anyway. I'd not have annotated the image at all except it contains 4 rather obvious asteroids all a bit fainter than 19th magnitude.

This image was taken over several nights. Blue data was highly focused by good seeing that was lost due to clouds. This made the blue stars much smaller than those taken other nights by the luminance, red and green filters under much poorer seeing. Even blurring the blue to try and make it match I ended up with some color fringing I couldn't seem to solve. Seems combining color data taken under near one arc second seeing with that taken under 3.5 arc second seeing doesn't work all that well. Note seeing got so bad for the luminance data I used only 3 of 8 frames taken so this doesn't go as deep as usual. After lots of work, this will have to do.

Please note I don't trust either my color balance nor that of the NOAO image. Mine is iffy due to the treatment I gave the blue data to try and match the much poorer red and green nights that may have put too much blue into the blue stars. The NOAO image seems too orange. The bright "red" star below the NOAO image is shown as being G0 which usually means a rather white star, not the red star their image shows. It is "bright" (magnitude 9.22) as it is only about 200 light-years away.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=3x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2420

NGC2440

Hubble took the definitive photo of NGC 2440, a small 76" of arc planetary nebula. Their photo was taken with narrow band imaging of various elements and thus the photo's colors are false but the detail tremendous. I had to work through the earth's atmosphere to get what little I could. Seeing was lousy making for rotten stars, with deconvolution I was able to pull some detail out of this tiny planetary. The star at its center doesn't show. You do see two bright regions on either side of it. The star shines with almost all of its light being in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum. Thus it doesn't get through our ozone layer so we can't really see it from earth. It is possibly the hottest star known. The surface temperature of our sun is about 10,000 F degrees. This guy has just recently puffed off its outer layers exposing the core where the fusion that powered the star took place. That went dead when the outer layers were lost exposing the super hot core. These cool rapidly so this one was caught soon after the change. Its temperature is more like 400,000 F degrees! 40 times hotter than our sun! This is why it emits mostly ultraviolet light. It is these outer layers that glow red and blue in my shot. The Hubble image can be seen at:
http://hubblesite.org/image/2058/news_release/2007-09 Their image has south up so is upside down from mine.

This is another very early image of mine taken with poor technique and limited processing skills. Also, it is three degrees below my usual 15 degrees south declination limit. This further limits my seeing considerably. It's been on my redo list now for some time but seeing that low just never seems to happen. The vertical elongation of the stars is due to atmospheric diffraction. I now can compensate for that in processing but couldn't when this was taken. This stretches the luminance stars into short streaks while the color images no longer align properly. I managed to deal with the color issue back then but not the luminance issue. Deconvolution just made that worse, in fact. Also, I severely underexposed the luminance data. This low a minimum of 60 minutes is needed but I took only 25 minutes and did so in too short of an exposure to control read noise.

NGC 2440 was discovered by William Herschel on March 4, 1790 and is in the original H400 observing program. My log from March 23, 1985 with my 10" f/5 at up to 300x on a typical night reads; "2 small arcs surrounded by a large elongated outer shell. Seeing was too unsteady to be sure of detail. Elongation is along the same axis the two arcs are seen on." Those inner arcs are the bright starlike objects in my image and are quite obvious in the HST image linked to above.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=5x5' RGB=3x5', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2440

NGC2449

NGC 2449 and IC 476 are a possibly interacting pair of galaxies in Gemini about 1.1 degrees southeast of Pollux. While at the same redshift there are no tidal plumes between the two. NGC 2779 looks pretty ordinary but smaller IC 476 is rather odd. The arm coming off the southwestern end of the bar is rather straight with only a slight curve and is rather red indicating little star formation for some time. The other arm comes off a short bar and is highly curved as well as blue. NGC 2449 appears to be a red and dead spiral with little star formation going on. Its spiral structure seems a bit odd with a somewhat blue segment splitting into two, both of which turn red. No arms seem to originate at the core but start well away as if from an invisible bar. It likely is my poor resolution giving this illusion still it may be an indication of interaction between these two.

ASK 248011.0, IC 2205 and NGC 2450 are also at about the same distance so likely part of the same group.

NGC 2449 was discovered by Édouard Stephan on January 18, 1874. NGC 2450 was also discovered by Édouard Stephan but four years later on February 26, 1878. IC 476 was discovered by Stephane Javelle on January 30, 1892. IC 2205 was also discovered by Stephane Javelle but also four years later on January 16, 1896.

There are three asteroids in the frame, two of which are fainter than 20th magnitude though one has such a short trail it appears rather bright for its magnitude. The other is very bright at magnitude 16.6 per the minor planet center. It's naming citation reads:
(6618) Jimsimons = 1936 SO
Jim Simons (b. 1938) is an American mathematician and philanthropist. He is the co-inventor of the Chern-Simons form, which has important applications in physics. Along with his wife, Marilyn Simons, he co-founded the Simons Foundation, a charity that supports math and science research.

If curious about the Chern-Simons form see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chern%E2%80%93Simons_form

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

Related Designations for NGC2449

NGC2460

NGC 2460 and IC 2209 are a pair of probably interacting galaxies in the southeast corner of Camelopardalis about 70 million light-years distant by redshift. Tully Fisher measurements, however, can't agree saying IC 2209 is 81 million light-years distant while NGC 2460 is 100 million light-years away or 20 million light-years more distant. If correct they aren't interacting. Still, there's an obvious plume running between the two that appears to come from IC 2209 which has a second obvious plume going to the northwest. NGC 2460 has a bright red central spiral surrounded by a very faint, chaotic blue spiral. Beside the plume between the two, there is an odd linear feature with a couple knots. The annotated image points to the ends of this feature. The knots seem to be redder than the rest of the feature. It seems to be a product of the plume between the galaxies and may be made up of several unrelated features that just happen to line up. This one needs more time than I gave it under the conditions which were rather poor both for seeing and transparency. Typical for this year, unfortunately.

This area of the sky is poorly studied with only 3 other galaxies having redshift data at NED. Only one more has a designation other than a positional designation from the 2MASS survey in the deep IR. There is a small round galaxy on the north edge of NGC 2460. It isn't even listed in NED so noted with a question mark.

Notes at NED all indicate the two galaxies are not interacting. However, all these papers are very old, all about 30 years old or older. More puzzling is a note about IC 2209 which states: "The nucleus is blue, while knots in the peripheral region are not." This is exactly backward from what I see in all images on the net including my own. Notes about NGC 2260 disagree with its classification as SA saying it does have a small bar and even one claims there might be a weak secondary bar! I don't see one in my image but the one they refer to is small. Due to lousy seeing, I may not have resolution sufficient to see what they are looking at.

Assuming the 70 million light-year distance NGC 2460's full extent (not including the plume which may be a feature of the companion) is about 140,000 light-years. That makes it a very large galaxy but most of its luminosity comes from the red spiral portion which is only 30,000 light-years across. IC 2209's diameter, excluding plume(s), is only 14,000 light-years making it a very small spiral. Both have strong activity which may be due to their interaction. NGC 2460 has an AGN core (Active Galactic Nucleus) indicating an actively feeding black hole at its core, while IC 2209 is a starburst galaxy indicating massive star formation is going on in it.

I just wish seeing had been better so I could resolve these two better. Yet another for the reshoot list. I fought clouds throughout the frames. They finally won when I took the last frame, a green one. I had to throw it out.

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

Related Designations for NGC2460

NGC2500

NGC 2500 is a nearby low surface brightness face on spiral galaxy in central Lynx. NED classifies it as SB(rs)d with HII emission. The NGC project says SAB. The bar is short but obvious. The arms are in disarray causing one source to call it a flocculent galaxy. I just see lots of star clouds that align in semi arm segments. Redshift puts it about 29 million light-years away while non-redshift measurements say 33 million, a rather good agreement. Outside the star cloud region is a very faint haze of somewhat blue stars that extends further on the northwest side than the other sides. This gives the galaxy a rather lopsided appearance.

The galaxy was discovered by William Herschel on March 9, 1788. It made the second Herschel 400 list and thus was on my to-do list but at a low priority. Turns out the galaxy is quite isolated with no nearby companions.

Using the non-redshift distance value of 33 million light-years the galaxy is about 38,000 light-years in diameter. Only slightly smaller than an average spiral. But this includes the very faint outlying regions. If limited to the bright portion then it is much smaller at 22,500 light-years. If the redshift distance is used it is slightly smaller yet. It's likely the stars of the galaxy don't suddenly end as the edges of my faint regions but continue on out just too faint for my exposure time so the full size of almost all galaxies is likely larger than I can measure it.

NED indicated it had HII emissions and the RGB data showed blue blobs that were likely new blue stars and likely marked the H alpha regions. Just that these new massive stars being so bright they hid the pink of H alpha and beta. It doesn't take much of a cosmological redshift to move the H alpha out of my 6nm passband. But this galaxy was still within my passband. So, with a quarter moon in the sky, I took 2 hours of H alpha data. Turned out it was quite weak but a few of the blue clouds did show up. I added the H alpha to the color data (not the luminance) and it made a small difference. The annotated image was made before I took the H alpha data so you can use it to compare to the other images with the H alpha. It was hardly worth the effort but there's nothing else to do on a bright moonlit night. It didn't help that the moon wasn't all that far from the galaxy so I may have lost a bit of contrast to it though I doubt I lost very much as I saw no hint of a gradient from it or anything else in the data.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' Ha=4x30' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2500

NGC2506

NGC 2506 is a type I2r open cluster in Monoceros. It seems there's little agreement on anything else. I find an older paper saying it is 9,000 light-years distant and 3.5 billion years old, later studies say 11,000 light-years distant and 2 billion years of age. WEBDA says 11,000 light years agreeing with a 1981 study but puts its age at 1.1 billion years. It still has some blue color to many of its stars. That would argue against the older ages though WEBDA shows it little reddened, less than 0.1 magnitudes. Other papers say the cluster is of low metallicity which results in stars being at least a bit bluer than similar aged stars with the sun's level of "metals." That may complicate the age issue some. WEBDA puts its metallicity at -0.37. The lower metallicity may be due to its significantly more distant location from the center of the galaxy. At least one paper suggested this.

The cluster is a great imaging target but I found few amateur images of it considering it is a lot more photogenic than most I take. It was discovered by William Herschel on February 23, 1791. It is in the original Herschel 400 observing program. My entry dated March 23, 1985 at 60X on an average night with my 10" f/5 reads "Small, very rich cluster consisting of a dozen bright and 100 or so (at least it seemed like that many) 13th magnitude and fainter stars. The guide reports nebulosity seen in a 6". This must be due to these faint stars as I saw no hint of nebulosity in my 10". I didn't try my 6" f/4 on it, however."

My image shows no nebulosity either. Seligman says of the visual appearance of the cluster: "NGC 2506 consists of several hundred faint stars thickly scattered across a region 8 to 12 arcmin in diameter. The cluster is not very impressive visually, as few of its stars are bright enough to be seen individually, and the rest merely form a faint hazy background; but it is a beautiful photographic object." He must be using a smaller scope than a 10" or under poor skies as I apparently was seeing a lot more of its stars.

There are only a couple star-like galaxies noted at NED in the field neither with redshift data so I didn't prepare an annotated image. Both were from the 2MASS survey. Others without sufficient IR emission may be in the image as they are poorly studied due to its location in the Zone of Avoidance.

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

Related Designations for NGC2506

NGC2541

NGC 2541 is a rather shaggy looking spiral galaxy in Lynx about 32 to 38 million light-years distant. Since nearby galaxy redshift can be dominated by other factors than cosmological expansion I'll go with the 38 million light-year distance. I measure its size at about 82,000 light-years. I suspect a longer exposure will show it a bit larger. It was discovered by William Herschel on March 9, 1788. It is in the second H400 observing program.

I found only a very few amateur images of it. So while it is a rather large galaxy with detail making it a good amateur target most have either ignored it or overlooked it. Searching forums for visual descriptions by amateurs I found few references to it as well. So I went to the two main Hubble sites and sure enough, the Space Telescope site returned an image when I asked for NGC 2541. Unfortunately, that was an image of NGC 2500! OOPS. Bring on the conspiracy theories, NASA got it wrong! When asked for NGC 2500 it returned the exact same image. I was hoping the two were somehow interchanged but no such luck.

Speaking of errors there's an object east of the southern end of NGC 2541 that NED shows as a galaxy. It gives it a redshift of 5.851988. That puts it less than a billion years from the beginning of the universe. Could a galaxy large enough to show as more than a pinpoint on my image grow that large in so short of time? I've labeled it as G which is what NED shows it as but added Q? Since the redshift is known to be spectroscopically determined an error on that is unlikely but not impossible if someone crossed a line on some table looking it up. Since I see it slightly larger than a star an error likely is involved here in some way. While I show it as nearly round NED says it is .1 by 0.1 minutes of arc in size. That's a streak not nearly round. That also makes it 370,000 light-years in size. Anyway, I seriously doubt I actually imaged a galaxy at that distance. It is SDSS J081533.03+490143.7 for those wishing to dig further into this mysterious object.

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

Related Designations for NGC2541

NGC2595

This interesting pair of galaxies is located in Cancer a bit over 3 degrees northwest of M44. They are at quite different distances so are unrelated. I'll start with the NGC galaxy as it is the less interesting to me of the two. It was discovered by William Herschel on January 11, 1787 but isn't in either of the first two H400 observing programs.

NGC 2595 is classified as SAB(rs)c at NED and is located a bit over 200 million light-years from us. At that distance, it is about 160,000 light-years across if you count the tip of the extended arm. I found these notes on it at NED:
"Slightly asymmetric spiral pattern, no disturbing object visible" (de Vaucouleurs)

"Bc with compact blue core and blue spiral arms" (CGPG)

`Barred spiral with prominent nucleus and distorted outer regions which extend to 70" = 18 kpc radius. There are no other galaxies nearby' (Sargent)

Yet NED indicates there is a possible disturbing object, ASK 484686.0. It looks as if it is a knot in a rather detached arm segment but NED doesn't indicate it is part of NGC 2595. It may be all that remains from the core of a disturbing galaxy or it may just be a star knot. In any case, it is surprising it didn't make Arp's list with the highly pulled out arm.

UGC 04414 appears to be a barred spiral with a detached ring. It is nearly 350 million light-years distant by redshift and even further away by other distance estimates. It is classed as S0a rather than a barred spiral. That might explain the inner structure, S0 galaxies can be spindles, but what about that ring? The one note at NED on it says: "...lens with high surface brightness." Again that's the inner structure, what about the ring? I wish I knew. I found nothing on it. How does everyone ignore this well-formed ring? Maybe I've missed something. If so, please let me know.

The annotated image includes several galaxy clusters. The distance to most is by photographic redshift while the distance to the Big Cluster Galaxy is usually spectroscopic and more likely the better distance estimate. Photographic redshift is indicated with a "p" after the distance. Also included is a galaxy group of 6 galaxies with a spectroscopic redshift that matches that of a 15 member galaxy cluster's big cluster galaxy. There's nothing seen at the position for the group but its error bar is 15 seconds of arc which does include a couple faint fuzzies but not the big cluster galaxy. Still, I think they are referring to the same object. Besides the normal collection of faint fuzzies, there is one blue quasar in the upper left corner at nearly 11 billion light-years.

The most distant galaxy I caught is SDSS J082745.70+213635.6 at 6.5 billion light-years. At magnitude 22.3 it is barely visible after the losses of JPG compression. Enlarge the image and it should show up.

Also, I caught two asteroids, (139935) 2001 RW133 at magnitude 19.2 and (89594) 2001 XS147 at magnitude 19.5 according to the Minor Planet Center. They are moving nearly parallel to each other in the lower left part of the image.

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

Related Designations for NGC2595

NGC2661

NGC 2661 is a face on spiral galaxy about 1.5 degrees northwest of far the more famous open cluster M67. It's 200 million light-year distance makes it appear rather small from our viewpoint but I measure it at nearly 80,000 light-years across. It is really a larger than average spiral galaxy. It is classified as an Scd: galaxy indicating its arms are spread wide. I hardly see recognizable arms, just a blue disk with one arc at the southern edge. Otherwise, I only see scattered star clouds. The galaxy is rather blue with only a small golden core region. A very old 1973 paper describes it as "Patchy -- Asymmetric broken arms, no disturbing object visible." While I agree with most of that there may be a disturbing object that is visible. I say "may" as I'm not so sure. NED, however, lists a round blue object, seen against it as the galaxy, ASK 610560.0. To me, it is just a star cloud same as many others in the galaxy. I suppose it could be the core of whatever "disturbed" it. NED usually notes these as part of a galaxy, not a separate galaxy but not always. For now, I'm saying it is just a star cloud in the galaxy. NGC 2661 was discovered by William Herschel on March 19, 1784. It isn't in either H400 observing program.

What I didn't realize is I also imaged NGC 2664. This very sparse star group was first logged by John Herschel on March 20, 1830. WEBDA had nothing on it but a position. SIMBAD calls it an open cluster. I was leaning toward it being an asterism. I finally found this paper https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full/2004/46/aa1121/aa1121.html . It was looking for Open Cluster Remnants, 0pen clusters torn apart by tidal forces of our galaxy. This was one candidate of it studied 3. It concluded "All three aggregates clearly emerge from the mean Galactic field, but, regrettably, the close scrutiny of proper motions and radial velocities reveals that we are not facing any physical group. Instead, what we are looking at are just chance alignments of a few bright unrelated stars." A long-winded way of saying it is just an asterism as I first thought it to be. The label in the annotated version is right in the middle of the asterism. Most catalogs would put the two bright blue stars to the upper right of the asterism outside the defined border but since it is just an asterism you can't be wrong either including or excluding them.

Near the top of the image are a pair of spiral galaxies; PGC 024629 and PGC 024631. Like NGC 2661 there's a blue cloud in PGC 024629 that NED lists as a separate galaxy, ASK 61073.5.0. It too appears to be just a star cloud in the galaxy. Both PGC galaxies have similar redshifts and appear distorted. It's quite likely they had a near encounter in the past.

The annotated image shows the normal mix of distant objects. One has me puzzled. It is a point source listed as a galaxy south and a bit east of NGC 2661. At least it is a point source in my image. NED, however, says it isn't a star as it is some 25 million light-years distant by verified spectral redshift. Using their size measurements (barely beyond point source) I get a size of 220 by 360 light-years. Something is wrong here so I just labeled it with a question mark. It is SDSS J084604.26+123417.7 if you wish to solve this puzzle.

There are 4 asteroids in the image, one on the northeast edge of the asterism is very faint. The Minor Planet Center lists its estimated magnitude at 20.7. That may be slightly too faint for a moving target. Some of the distant galaxies in the image are as faint as 22.7.

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

Related Designations for NGC2661