NGC3090

NGC 3090 appears to be the anchoring galaxy for a loose group of galaxies about 300 million light-years from us. I find two groups listed at NED, WBL 248 consists of the 7 major galaxies in the group while MZ 03587 more than doubles that number considering the many small dwarf galaxies in the group that are almost starlike in my image. NGC 3090 is a huge elliptical galaxy. Assuming its redshift look back time is right at 290 million years then the galaxy is 200,000 light-years across. Its outer regions sort of fade away making it hard to pin down a size though the eastern edge seems rather sharp as if it is an arc of a shell left over from one of the many mergers that likely created this large galaxy. I find very little on this group in the literature, however. It seems to have only one galaxy still giving birth to stars at a decent rate, that is LEDA 1080545, a very blue spiral that really stands out among the field of rather red and dead galaxies that make up this group. FGC 114A in the lower left corner appears rather warped to my eye. A surprising number of them in my images seem curved like this one. Rarely is a disturbing galaxy in the area. This time there are several small galaxies at about its distance nearby though none look disturbed. A few are rather dense so might be able to warp a low mass flat galaxy without being noticeably distorted in the process. All of the NGC galaxies were discovered by Albert Marth on January 22, 1865.

The annotated image notes all galaxies for which NED had redshift data. Those over a billion light-years distant were usually identified only by their coordinates so are shown only as G in the annotated image. The few quasars are noted by Q. NED is now including quasar candidates with photographic distance estimates. These are quite iffy so I'm not including them unless they are also strong in UV light, a good indicator of a quasar. I did include one however that is quite blue in my image even though it wasn't listed as a UV source. I can't say it is any more likely to be correctly categorized as a quasar but the blue color can be an indicator.

There's one asteroid identified in the image. I found a second in the raw FITS but it was too faint to make it into a color composite image. Conditions went downhill as I took this data as shown by the asteroid trail getting fainter as it moved northwest during the 40 minutes of the exposure. Color data, mainly green and red, taken after the luminance were hit even worse, with the great very weak. I had to include some pseudo green created from the red and blue data much as is done when making a color image from red and blue POSS plates though with some green data to help guide the process. Also seeing was off and on lousy during the color data phase bothering some stars more than others and creating color arcs on some stars and not others. I tried deconvolving the red and green to match the blue but was not totally successful. Due to the increasing clouds, this image doesn't go as deep as usual.

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

Related Designations for NGC3090

NGC3115

NGC 3115 is one of two galaxies known as the Spindle Galaxy. It is located in Sextans about 10 megaparsecs distant (about 31.6 million light years. Though redshift puts it more distant than that redshift can be rather unreliable this close as random velocities can cause errors of over 10 megaparsecs and much more for galaxy cluster members. The galaxy used to be classed as E7 before the inner disk was discovered. Then it was reclassified as S0-. Some see a slight hook to the disk and say it is S0-/a. This galaxy is low in my skies and was deep in fog rising from the lake which cut both my resolution and limiting magnitude by quite a bit. I was unable to show any hint of the hook structure to the disk nor do I see it on any web images including some by space telescopes.

The galaxy is considered to have a super-supermassive black hole at its core that is about 2 billion solar mass in size. This makes it the closest known galaxy to beat the billion solar mass size for its core. I'd expect such a super-supermassive black hole (our galaxy's black hole is only about 0.2% as big) to be very active but NED's classification includes the PAS label which stands for a passive core galaxy. Though lots of X-ray emitting double stars are seen near its core by Chandra. See http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/multimedia/photo-H-11-248.html for more on this. While the X-ray image is blue in the false color composite image at this site I found the core to be slightly blue in my image while the rest of the galaxy is quite red. I don't know the source of this but it apparently has some blue stars at the core not found elsewhere. Again this goes a bit against is PAS notation at NED.

The galaxy was found by William Herschel on February 22, 1787. Being big and bright it made the original Herschel 400 list. Reading my log entry from April 15, 1985, I must have been high on something celebrating surviving another tax season and not having to work to midnight on extensions. I say this as my notes say I was seeing an obviously non-existent dust lane. It reads: "Beautiful! A small version of M-31 complete with dust lane on the western edge. Much detail seen in the spiral arms with averted vision. Oddly the Herschel program says it is round yet it is obviously highly elongated." I went on to stop the scope to 4" and it still was highly elongated rather than round and the night was listed as fair due to high humidity. I was using a 10" f/5 scope. How I saw spiral arms or a dust lane I can only imagine due to tax season fatigue. Rather than averted vision I must have been using averted imagination. Or was I on the wrong galaxy! I put it to the effects of a nasty tax season.

All sources I found consider UGCA 200 a companion of NGC 3115. They do both have similar redshift. I found only one non-redshift estimate which is less than half the redshift distance. If it is a true companion then it likely lies about the same 10 megaparsecs from us as NGC 3115. Assuming this the irregular Magellanic galaxy is about 17,000 light-years across making it a dwarf galaxy. Most sources call it unusually red for such a galaxy. Its core is slightly red though the outer region is light blue. Overall I'd call it deficient in blue rather than excessively red though I suppose this is a half full/empty glass issue.

I was surprised to find the galaxy's field was not in the Sloan survey's field so few of the hundreds of background galaxies had any redshift data. Most that did were fainter than my 20th magnitude limit due to the fog over the lake. Normally I go to about 22.5 and likely would have picked up more of them. Most of the ones lost to fog were from the MDS which stands for Medium Deep Survey which was done by the Hubble Space Telescope. Yet I found no processed images of the galaxy at any HST website.

There's one asteroid in the image. Note how its brightness varies along its track. Only one spot does it seem to show the right brightness for a 19th magnitude asteroid moving at its speed. For a bit right after that (it's moving up to the right) it almost vanishes entirely due to the fog. This gives some indication how poor conditions were. I took 5 objects this (December 18, the only December night I could open) night. All hurt severely by the fog. This fog is called "Arctic Smoke" by locals. Humidity is nearly 100% here in winter. The lake ice is warmer than the land due to the water below seeping up through cracks. This added humidity hits the colder air above the lake and turns to ice fog. As it hits shore trees they are coated with this ice with a white layer of hoar frost. I'm stuck imaging through this when shooting low in winter. This limits how low I can go in winter. At -7 degrees declination this image is about the limit unless the night is unusually dry.

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

Related Designations for NGC3115

NGC3147

NGC 3147 is a beautiful fully face on classic spiral that for some reason is overlooked by nearly all astro imagers. Why I can't imagine. As my image started to come in I saw a very faint smudge below the galaxy halfway to the bottom, several when I looked closely. I was sure it a reflection of some sort but with time short I didn't have time to move the scope and start again. I decided I'd process it out. I then went searching for deep images of this galaxy and found none. All but one went less deep than my first luminance frame. That didn't include the area of my interest. Being in an area of few surveys I couldn't find even a professional image of it that covered the right area. I then enhanced the heck out of the POSS two plates and there it was. Since the declination is 73.4 degrees it is in an area of known IFN. It's just very faint in my field. Someone who likes going for IFN should investigate this area.

NGC 3147 is a classic Seyfert 2 galaxy so very well studied, even the HST has taken it but the only amateur released images seem to exist for public display. The only one I found burned in the core region. That, of course, doesn't cover the area either.

NGC 3147 was discovered by William Herschel on April 3, 1785. While amateur imagers mostly ignore this great galaxy it is in the original Herschel 400 observing program so I assume quite a few visual amateurs in the northern hemisphere have at least seen it visually. My log entry from April 15, 1985, on a fair night due to high humidity reducing transparency at 60 to 150 power in my 10" f/5 reads: "Large, nearly circular galaxy. Seems much larger than indicated. I'd guess it is 6'x5'. Faint halo fades away so slowly it is impossible to tell where the galaxy ends. Nucleus is star-like. This is an interesting Galaxy!" Considering I measure it at about 4.5' maximum on my image that goes beyond anything I could have seen that night I have to wonder how I got the size so wrong. I had finished all tax returns or had them on extension and was taking a well-earned break that night. How that caused me to nearly double its size I don't know but I did. Oddly, I can't find where I ever went back to it until taking this image.

Being so far north and in the Zone of Avoidance, the field is poorly studied. Only it and the flat catalog galaxy in the lower left corner had redshift data. NED had only 6 other galaxies in even listed. All are from the 2MASS survey. That doesn't even list visual magnitudes. Many other galaxies with insufficient 2-micron emission to make that survey are scattered about the image. I can't find anything on them. Being so far north it isn't surprising no asteroids made an appearance either.

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

Related Designations for NGC3147

NGC3158

The NGC 3158 group is composed of 8 NGC galaxies and many others a bit over 300 million light-years distant by redshift. NGC 3158 is a huge Elliptical galaxy whose gravity anchors the group. I get a size of 275,000 light-years for its outer reaches. It was discovered by William Herschel on March 17, 1787 and is in the second Herschel 400 object list.

Half the NGC members were found by Guillaume Bigourdan on February 1, 1886. He found NGC 3150, 52, 59 and 61, all in the southern part of the group. R.J. Mitchel working for the Earl of Rosse found two, NGC 3152 and 3160 with the last, NGC 3163 also found by William Herschel the same night as 3158. It, however, isn't in either Herschel 400 listing.

NGC 3159 is listed as an E2 spiral and as peculiar. That may be due to the very faint plume to the south. Ignoring the plume it is 67,000 light years across. The plume fades away so I'm hard-pressed to determine an edge but my best guesstimate puts it at least 200 arc seconds long making it over 300,000 light-years in size though of much lower mass than NGC 3158.

NGC 3160 is a strange spiral likely involved in a collision to create its odd structure. It is about 83,000 light-years across. NGC 3151 at 60,000 light-years is an SA0 Galaxy/ NGC 3152 is also rather odd being a ringed barred spiral with no arms, just the ring. NGC 3160 is a warped spiral seen edge on and is about 125,000 light-years wide. It appears, at least when seen edge-on, as a red spiral. Even the warped plumes off its ends are mostly red indicating no new star formation of any significance for millions of years. In fact, almost all members of the group appear to fall in the red and dead category.

NGC 3161, an E2 galaxy, is the smallest of the NGC galaxies in the group at only 57,000 light-years but does have an AGN core indicating it is still reacting to a likely interaction with another galaxy not too long in the past.

NGC 3163, Herschel's other discovery is quite large at a bit over 140,000 light-years and listed as an SA0-: galaxy rather than an elliptical.

NGC 3159, 3161 and 3163 appear to share a common halo indicating they may have had a close encounter with each other in the recent past. This may explain the large southern going plume coming from NGC 3159.

There are many other galaxies also likely members of the group. One without redshift data is east-southeast of NGC 3158, MCG +07-21-025. It isn't classified that I found and hard to observe as it is hiding behind a rather bright blue star. It makes it look like it is a red galaxy with a blue core.

The annotated image identifies all I found redshifts for. Only a few not members of the group. One star-like object is labeled RQ/G east-northeast of NGC 3158. RQ stands for Rejected Quasar. It apparently is just a very bright compact blue galaxy about 3.1 billion light-years distant. The Sloan image shows a slight blue disk around a bright nearly white core that is larger than a star of similar brightness. Likely it is some type of AGN, just not sufficient to be a quasar.

The minor planet center shows a periodic comet moving quite rapidly in the image but I see nothing at the position. It is 3.56 AU distant from us and 3.12 AU from the sun. One estimate puts it at 22.7 magnitude which would certainly be too faint at its speed and my lousy skies to have picked up.

Again this was a night of poor transparency though seeing was not good it was better than the previous night. Still, this image doesn't go as faint as it would under what used to be normal conditions here. The faint outer reaches of these galaxies is likely greater than I could see thanks to these less than optimum conditions.

I got one more blue image than normal because I thought one blue had been hurt beyond repair and so retook a blue image another night. Turned out I meant that comment for a different image so retook the wrong one. I used all three anyway.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=5x10' RG=2x10' B=3x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC3158

NGC3162

NGC 3162 is a distorted near face on spiral galaxy in the neck of Leo the Lion about 72 to 74 million light-years distant by redshift and non-redshift measurements. One paper describes it "NGC 3162 is an Sbc spiral of low inclination. One arm is prominent, the other one much weaker. This could be a consequence of an interaction." I find no nearby galaxy it might have interacted with. Only PGC 029756 is in the image at the right distance. It is rather small and undistorted making it an unlikely candidate.

It could be due to something it ate long ago I suppose. The annotated image points to a small round object with a redshift the same as the galaxy. NED refers to it a being part of the galaxy, that is, a star cloud in it, though it is unusually round for one also very blue as these clouds often are. But instead, could it be the core of whatever this guy ate causing its odd shape? I found no papers discussing this so it is pure unsupported conjecture on my part.

Anyway, it has a nice arm with a long spur coming from it but the other side of the galaxy only has a short tightly wrapped arm. The spur seems to then cause a huge very blue low surface brightness arm that nearly doubles the size of the galaxy. Even with this arm, I measure its size as a bit less than 65 million light-years.

The galaxy was discovered by William Herschel on March 12, 1784. It is in the second Herschel 400 program. It is listed twice in the NGC. It was discovered by Heinrich d'Arrest nearly 80 years later on February 21, 1863. But he got the position wrong causing it to get its own entry in the NGC when Dreyer apparently didn't catch the error.

The rest of the field is rather unremarkable with the usual background of distant galaxies and quasars. Most are listed at NED as quasar candidates but I suspect they are likely quasars due to their brightness and distance. Little else could be that bright and distant. Also, 3 asteroids barely show in the raw FITS data but loses due to the JPG process made them so faint I didn't bother to point them out. They were about 21st magnitude and moving rapidly making them hard to pick up.

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

Related Designations for NGC3162

NGC3166

NGC 3166 and 3169 are a pair of interacting galaxies Arp somehow missed. Third NGC galaxy is NGC 3165. All three are at the same redshift distance with any differences being within measurement error and relative velocity as they encounter each other. All three appear distorted with NGC 2169 on the east side being really tore up with tidal clouds and plumes everywhere. Some images indicate a curving plume from 3166 going southeast then back northeast to 3169. It is broken, not continuous in my image. Likely due to my very short exposure time. A much broader connection seems to go directly east/west between the two so it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. With all the debris from their interaction, I don't understand way Arp didn't include this one in his atlas of peculiar galaxies. They are located in Sextans about 73 to 78 million light-years away. If this is correct these are two very large galaxies. NGC 3166 would be about 120 thousand light-years across. NGC 3169 would be 145 thousand light-years across. "Little" NGC 3165 would be 33 thousand light-years in diameter.

While NGC 3165 shows no plumes it has a very odd structure.
NED classes it as SA(s)dm indicating it is a Magellanic type galaxy. The NGC Project just classes it as an irregular galaxy. Is it naturally this way or is this due to interaction with the other two, far larger galaxies? NGC 3166 is classed by NED as SAB(rs)0/a;HII LINER. NGC Project says simply S0 or Sa. Odd as it appears to me to have a very strong, short bar. NGC 3169 is classed by NED as SA(s)a pec;HII LINER while the NGC project just says Sa.

A very low surface brightness galaxy SDSS J101329.62+032655.1 lies above NGC 3165 and a bit northwest of NGC 3166. It appears to be a disk galaxy with a faint nucleus. NED has no redshift data for it. Is it related to the other three? Then there's KDG 068 to the southeast of NGC 3166. It is classed as a dwarf galaxy though it is hard to tell from some of the debris from the two main interacting galaxies. North of NGC 3169 is a fuzzy horizontal streak I took to be debris. At its eastern end, NED using Sloan data sees a galaxy of 18th magnitude (that would be quite bright in my image) that is 12 seconds of arc by 2 seconds of arc. The entire streak is over a minute of arc long by about 0.2 minutes thick and might be 18th magnitude if condensed to a point. So is this what they show as being SDSS J101415.65+033413.3? To me, it is just more pieces ripped from the galaxy. I could repeat this with other tidal pieces as well. I think this just shows that automatic recognition of galaxies can fail under certain circumstances.

There are 7 quasars in the image. Some are marked UvES for Ultraviolet Excess Sources which are quasar candidates. One is marked as a quasar and as a galaxy with an AGN (Active Galactic Nucleus). It too is likely a quasar that is mostly hidden from our view by the core of the galaxy. Arp thought, and may still think, that a quasar's redshift was not cosmological and that they were ejected from highly disturbed galaxies such as these. Four close to one of them would likely be seen as significant to his theories. Yet another reason I'm surprised he didn't include them in his atlas. Though likely the quasars weren't recognized as such at that time.

Three asteroids are in the image.
(111576) 2002 AQ20 at magnitude 18.4
(32960) 1996 NO4 at magnitude 18.6
(266449) 2007 JE at magnitude 19.1

Unfortunately, I had that one stubborn set screw come loose again on the camera so the left side isn't well focused. Also seeing was poor. I need to redo this one with a lot more time but the way the weather has been this year it isn't looking likely this galaxy season.

Just too many galaxy and too little time.

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

Related Designations for NGC3166

NGC3184

NGC 3184 is a classic face on spiral galaxy in southern Ursa Major near one of the bears back feet. It made my list as it is one of the original Herschel 400 objects that I'm slowly working on. Also, it is a neat spiral that is overlooked by most imagers. William Herschel discovered it on the night of March 18, 1787. My visual notes with my 10" f/5 scope on May 4, 1984 at 10:15 CDT reads: Beautiful face on spiral, round with much arm detail. How did Messier miss this one? The nucleus is ill-defined. Hard to understand how this was a difficult object in an 8" scope." This refers apparently to the preliminary text I had of the list in which the person making the comments used an 8" scope and found this a difficult object. I no longer have that text. I went on to add: "Was he viewing from Central Park in NYC?."

In any case, the part about my finding the core ill-defined certainly isn't the case with my digital image. Though I had to watch the stretch of the core to preserve the spiral structure in to the very core. Most online images show it pretty well burned in with a lot of the spiral structure lost. In this case, both the redshift and Tully Fisher distance estimates are in close agreement. It is about 38 million light-years distant. Assuming that is correct I get a size of about 95,000 light-years though see faint hints of it extending another 15 million light-years to the south. I'd need more exposure time to verify that.

NED classifies it as SAB(rs)cd with HII. Radio shows a very strong bar in CO. While the bright arms do come from an area away from the core as if there were a bar I see none at visual wavelengths and the faint arm structure continues to spiral in to within a few seconds of arc of the core. The NGC Project goes with the visual and says Sc (no bar). I am picking up a few hints of pink HII regions but most are below my resolution even though this was a better night than average for seeing. Transparency was poor due to a haze, however. The haze likely stabilized the seeing. 6.5 magnitude HD 89053, an M2 giant cast a horrid red gradient over the image thanks to the haze layer preceding the 3" of snow that shut me down that night. This is likely why I didn't think the data worth processing. Fortunately, I'm getting better at dealing with such issues and pretty well eliminated it at the cost of some background faint fuzzies in the area of the star.

This active galaxy has had two or three supernova in the last 100 years. SN 1937F, SN 2010d and SN 1999gi. SN 2010d might have been an outburst of a Luminous Blue Variable rather than a SN. I don't know why they can't tell for sure which it was. LBV stars are interesting. For those wishing to read up on them, this paper might help: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1994PASP..106.1025H Or just think Eta Carinae. Its likely the most famous LBV.

The galaxy is also the home of two other NGC objects. NGC 3181 is certainly a bright HII region I've pointed to in the annotated image. NGC 3180 is harder to pin down. The NGC Project says: "NGC 3180 is a star cloud or HII region in NGC 3184's northwestern arm. The position in NGC (by Dreyer from LdR's observations) fits the star cloud better, but the HII region is brighter, though smaller. The number may well apply to both objects or simply the general area of the arm where they are found." I've pointed to both in the annotated image. I can't see either as an obvious candidate, however.

To the southeast of NGC 3184 is a galaxy that depending on which catalog you consult is either just a galaxy or a quasar or a galaxy with an AGN1 core or one with a Seyfert 1 core. Take your pick. It is known only by coordinates in each of these catalogs so I've only listed it as G/Q/AGN1/SY1. To the north near the top edge, a bit left of center is ASK 314681.0 which had two separate entries in NED. One as an AGN1 using only coordinates for a label and then as the ASK object as well as others again only by coordinates as a BLAGN candidate. That stands for Broad Line Active Galaxy Nucleus. The core is burned in my image so is very bright compared to the star disk around it. To the south of NGC 3184 is ASK 314329.0. It is listed as an AGN1 and appears starlike in my image but in the Sloan image, it has a faint bit of fuzz around it. Another galaxy with a super bright core.

This image was taken in 2014. A supernova was discovered by Koichi Itagaki in NGC 3184 on March 21, 2016. It is officially Supernova 2016bkv. I've wanted to take it ever since along with 2016bau discovered March 13 as it is in Arp 27. The first sucker holes didn't open until April 5UT -- and sucker holes they were! More on that in a bit.

The galaxy NGC 3184 is about 40 million light-years distant so the star actually exploded 40 million years ago; its light just now reaching us. In the animated image, it is the lower right of two stars to the upper left of the galaxy's core. See the animated link to see a before and after image. The star may be one of many in a small blue star cluster seen in the before image as a blue object. It appears to be on the upper right edge of this little blue blob of stars. This galaxy hosted other supernovae in 1999, 1937 and 1921. That's far more often than in most galaxies, ours included.

In the animated image a few stars in the galaxy will change brightness a bit. This is due to much poorer conditions the night the supernova was imaged. Field stars beyond the galaxy are all from the 2014 image so don't show this effect. I thought I had equalized the stars in both images, obviously that wasn't quite correct.

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

Related Designations for NGC3184

NGC3198

NGC 3198 is a classic grand design spiral galaxy in southern Ursa Major near the western back foot. Recent Cepheid measurements by the HST put it at 47.3 million light-years from earth. The redshift would indicate 41 million light-years so there is some agreement. Though NED lists some 17 other Cepheid measurements from earth-based scope that give values from 36.5 to 57.4 million light-years. But their average comes back to 47 million light-years so I'll go with the HST project's determination. The HST image of part of the galaxy is at:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/NGC_3198_Hubble_WikiSky.jpg

I imaged this one just because I had never imaged it before and because I thought I spotted an interesting distant galaxy cluster in the POSS plates to the west-northwest of NGC 3198. It is the cluster WHL J101858.1+453618 listed at 4.4 billion light-years. It is marked by GC 4.4 in the annotated image. NED shows it containing 21 galaxies. Many of these appear to be visible in my image. The position seems to be that of the largest and brightest member though it is shown to have a distance of only 4.0 billion light-years. Though both are photographic estimates. These give a ballpark figure at best so the difference isn't all that surprising.

Due to wanting to try to pick up members of this cluster I doubled my normal luminosity time. Instead of my normal 22.5 limiting magnitude this one goes far deeper. The quasar southwest of the NGC 3198 at 12.4 billion light-years is listed at magnitude 23.2.

Down in the lower left corner is a Blazar (BLZR). These are quasars in which the relativistic jet is pointed right at us. This causes rapid fluctuations in brightness. This also makes it a BRLG. This stands for Bright Radio Line Galaxy as seen by radio telescopes. This is a rather nearby one so bright and earned 29 separate designations in NED! I'll use the first one, B3 1018+456. Enter that in NED to see the rest.

In the lower right corner is a small, very fuzzy blue blob of a galaxy. It has a redshift that puts it about the same distance as far large NGC 3198, only 44 million light-years away. It must be some sort of dwarf Magellanic galaxy. NED lists its largest diameter at 0.32 minutes which would give it a size of only 4100 light-years. NGC 3198's diameter is 8.5 minutes. At 47 million light-years that would give a diameter of 116,000 light-years, about the size of our galaxy.

Anyone following my posts knows I keep finding, usually blue, galaxies not listed in NED even though many far fainter ones are. This image will be no exception. Toward the upper left, below a rather bright, white, star is such a blue galaxy. As usual, it is marked with a question mark. I just scanned the annotated image for blue galaxies not listed. It was the first one I tried! That caused me to try some more. Next 4 were listed at NED, just without redshift data. That's fine. But then the next one was another miss. It too is below a rather white star, though well below it. Look to the northwest, left of the galaxy cluster at 4.4 billion light-years. I quit looking after that.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=8x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC3198

NGC3205

NGC 3205 is one of three galaxies in the LDCE 0722 galaxy group. It consists of three mostly red and dead spiral galaxies all seen rather face on. They are located in the hind feet of Ursa Major about 320 to 330 million light-years from us. NGC 3205 was my main subject as it has plumes indicating it has either had a near collision with another galaxy or is still digesting something it ate. I favor the latter as nothing else in the area appears obviously disturbed but NGC 3507 has hints of a faint plume to the northeast and the plume of 3205 extends almost to 3507. NGC 3205 is shown simply as S? by NED. The NGC Project says only pec even though it is an obvious spiral. Seligman comes in with Sa?? pec. I don't know what 2 question marks mean. Including the faintest parts of the plumes, I get a size of about 225,000 light-years. Including only the obvious plumes it is 140,000 light-years in size, still a large galaxy. It is the reddest of the three. That may be due to its gas and dust being either ejected or heated thus stopping star formation as a result of its interaction with another galaxy some billion years ago or so.

NGC 3202 is listed at NED as Sb(r)a. The inner arms from the bar forming a ring that other arms come off from, two from the north end and one from the southern end. These arms are slightly blue indicating some but not much star formation is still going on there at least in the more recent past. The NGC Project, however, classifies it as SBa ignoring the ring. Seligman also ignores the ring but seems to love question marks showing it as SBa??. I measure it at about 110,000 light-years across.

NGC 3207 is shown as having an AGN at its core and is listed simply as S? by NED. The NGC Project, however, says simply pec and Seligman, true to its love of question marks says pec??. Including its faint halo, I get a size of about 160,000 light-years. So all three of these galaxies are quite large. NED shows a galaxy cluster with a count of 12 seen through the southwest edge of the galaxy. The photographic redshift puts it 4.57 billion light-years distant. But the bright cluster galaxy anchoring the group has a spectroscopic redshift of 3.88 billion light-years, putting it much closer. Either it isn't part of the cluster or the photographic redshift has a surprisingly large error. I don't know which or some combination is the true explanation.

All were discovered by William Herschel on February 3, 1788. None are in either of the Herschel 400 observing programs. Several dwarf galaxies that lie at the same distance can be seen scattered around the field as noted in the annotated image. Only one other normal galaxy is in the image that is obviously part of the same group though not listed as part of the LDCE 0722 group of three. That is UGC 5578 at the very bottom of my image. Shown as Scd: by NED it measures some 145,000 light-years across. It just seems smaller since it is seen close to edge on. It seems the most normal of the group to my eye.

I was surprised by how many rather bright galaxies weren't listed at NED or SIMBAD with other than positional designations. Those are simply listed as G in the in the annotated image. Same for quasars, Q, which also are listed only by position. A couple quasars have a z value of over 3 which places them over 11 billion light-years distant, that light was emitted when the universe was only a bit over 2 billion years old. The wavelengths we see were deep in the ultraviolet when emitted. Their wavelength stretched by more than 4 times by the universe's expansion over those 11+ billion years. One asteroid snuck in at the top of the image. It was moving rather fast in prograde motion so rather dim for its magnitude. Asteroids mid prograde motion are much faster than those in mid retrograde motion as they have to make up for time lost going backwards.

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

Related Designations for NGC3205

NGC3206

NGC 3206 is a strangely distorted galaxy in Ursa Major just west of the bowl of the dipper. It is quite nearby at about 60 million light-years by redshift and 66 million light-years by the median of 7 Tully-Fisher measurements. Using the latter distance it is a rather average size spiral at 47,000 light-years across its north-south axis. I don't find much on it and nothing on how it might have gotten its odd shape. Unusual the shape might be but not enough to garner a peculiar label as most classify it is an SBc or SBcd galaxy. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 8, 1793. It didn't make either of the Herschel 400 observing programs, probably due to its low surface brightness.

It has two apparent companions in my frame. NGC3220 at 61 million light-years by redshift is a nearly edge-on spiral with very blue star clouds at the ends of both the east and west ends. While NED and the NGC Project classify it as Sb or Sb: Seligman says Sd? Quite a disagreement unless that is a typo. It looks to my untrained eye as Sb is more likely the case. This one was also discovered by William Herschel the same night as NGC 3206. But then 97 years later on August 8, 1890 Lewis Swift reported it as a new galaxy even though the NGC had been released and his position, as well as Herschel's, was right on the galaxy. How Swift didn't notice this nor Dreyer when he entered it in the IC as IC 604 I don't know. But thanks to this slip it has both an NGC and IC number even though neither discoverer got the position wrong. The blue star clouds at each end make me wonder if it and 3206 didn't have a fast close encounter some time back. Like 3206 it isn't in either Herschel observing program either. It is much smaller than 3206 at about 21,000 light-years in size as seen from our sideways view.

The third NGC galaxy lies between these two and is NGC 3214. It is an S0/a galaxy and is obviously unrelated as it is some 6 times more distant. So while it appears much smaller than the other two NGC galaxies that is an illusion as it is about 72,000 light-years across. It was discovered by Ralph Copeland, an astronomer on the payroll of Lord Rosse who used the 72" scope to find this one on March 9, 1874.

It too has a companion at about the same distance (350 million light-years by redshift) that is an Sbc spiral with weakly defined arms that is cataloged as CGCG 290-031. It is some 66,000 light-years across assuming its redshift distance.

A highly distorted galaxy with a faint highly distorted arm or plume lies below NGC 3206. Conditions were poor the night I took this data with very low transparency and a super bright sky thanks to all the ice in the air at an ambient temperature of -36C. Thus the plume or arm doesn't begin to show like I'd expected it to. It is labeled as ASK 210636.0 and it too is at 360 million light-years so could be related to the others. Look around and you'll find a couple more at about this redshift distance. All are likely part of a widely separated galaxy group.

Also in the image is a quasar candidate shown as a UvES (Ultraviolet Excess Source) as well as a galaxy that NED considers a quasar at only 1.61 billion light-years. The galaxy shape is quite obvious in my image. Normally I'd expect a quasar to be so bright the underlying galaxy would be lost in its glare. So I have a problem with the quasar designation and have listed it as G/Q in the lower right or my image.

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

Related Designations for NGC3206