NGC3877

NGC 3877 is a near edge on Sc spiral galaxy in Ursae Majoris just south of Chi Ursae Majoris. That blankety-blank star cast nasty gradients across the image forcing me to do some heavy duty removal. I had moved the galaxy well north of the center and a bit to the side in an effort to reduce the issues but nothing I did could eliminate them.

NGC 3877 had a 12th magnitude type II supernova in 1998 that equaled the galaxy's total light output. William Herschel found this one on February 5, 1788. My main reason for imaging it is it is an original Herschel 400 object. While the Herschel 400 guide seemed to think it rather hard and starlike my comments from May 4, 1985 reads: "Very good edge on with dust lane. Seems more interesting than its listed magnitude would indicate." I'm not sure what I was seeing for a dust lane! Sure no sign of one in my image. I probably was seeing the dark lane giving the galaxy a weak black eye effect and not seeing but the central part of it rather than the full extent seen in my image. Now, where's a time machine so I can go back and ask myself about this? Both redshift and Tully Fisher measurements put the galaxy about 50 million light-years distant, very good agreement for a change.

It appears it might be a flocculent galaxy if it was seen face on as I see no real spiral structure but more disconnected short segments. They do make it a rather photogenic galaxy. A note at NED indicates it has many HII regions some quite bright. However, none show up in my image but for a faint hint of something at the north end below the centerline. It may be just a red field star, however. Even the Sloan image shows it may be a star. There is a bright blue star cluster southwest of the core that likely is full of HII emission if seen in H alpha light. Maybe that's the bright one the note mentions.

Transparency was poor when this was taken. That plus the glare from Chi Ursae Majoris reduced my limiting magnitude by a full magnitude from normal. Many things that would have shown up in the annotated image didn't come through the gunk. I did include two that just barely show in the TIFF version. I don't know if they barely survived the JPG lossy compression. You may need to up the brightness of the screen and enlarge the image to find these. Normally they'd be easy at magnitude 21.3 but not under the sky this night, March 2, 2014. Still, the galaxy came through fairly well.

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

Related Designations for NGC3877

NGC3884

NGC 3884 is a huge ringed galaxy in northeastern Leo about 330 million light-years distant. It is likely a member of the Abell 1367 galaxy cluster. The cluster is centered about three quarters of a degree southwest of this field but is over 2 degrees in radius so easily extends to this region. It is listed at 315 million light-years distant. NGC 3884 is a somewhat red and dead galaxy, as are the other spirals that are likely cluster members. This is not uncommon in clusters where multiple mergers have driven much of the cool gas out of the galaxy and heated the rest to where it can't form stars. At a size of some 215,000 light-years, it appears NGC 3884 has had plenty of mergers. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 27, 1785 but is in neither of the H400 observing programs.

The field contains several large and somewhat bright galaxies I'd have thought Herschel would have seen but apparently didn't. North of NGC 3884 is the double galaxy IC 732. The pair appear to be interacting. The northern galaxy seems to have a core that is not in the center but this may be more perspective and it may have a warped disk adding to this appearance. The pair, or maybe only the southern galaxy were (was) discovered by Guillaume Bigourdan on March 29, 1886. His coordinates point to the southern galaxy but his notes say: "Extremely faint and diffuse, but its existence is certain; I can see brighter points in it which may be stars 13.4-13.5 (magnitude)". Some say this indicates he saw both galaxies with the core of the northern one appearing star-like to him. Assuming the two are interacting and thus at the same distance from us the two span a distance of 134,000 light-years.

Near the right edge of my image is PGC 36609. I measure its size at nearly 150,000 light-years making it considerably larger than our Milky Way galaxy or even M31. NED classifies it as S0 which is odd as it has some nice spiral arms. I'd say Sab rather than S0. The arms are faint but quite obvious.

The other large galaxy is PGC 36639 an S0/a galaxy by NED's classification. I'd add to that saying it has an outer ring that should be noted in its classification. It too is much larger than either our galaxy or M31 at 140,000 light-years in diameter thanks to that faint outer ring.

The image contains three rather bright asteroids and four fainter ones. The brightest has no color trail while the two slightly fainter ones do. This is because two of the luminance frames were taken two nights before the rest of the frames including the other two luminance and all color frames. It was only in the frame that first night. All others were in the frame only the second night that did have color data. This also explains why the luminance trails are the same length as each color's trail. Clouds had moved in that first night and I had to shut down. Those first frames aren't all that great but again, due to clouds the second night I only took two more luminance frames planning on taking more after the color data but clouds had another idea. Typical of what little imaging I have been able to do this year.

But thanks to the Paramount's accuracy I combined the two nights luminance frames without needing any alignment! Since dither doesn't help much with only 4 frames they were not dithered making this possible. Now if the sky would work as well it would make this old geezer really happy.

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

Related Designations for NGC3884

NGC3893

NGC 3893 and NGC 3896 are a pair of interacting galaxies in Ursa Major some 50 to 65 million light-years distant depending on which estimate you trust. Redshift says about 54 million light-years for NGC 3893 and 51 million light-years for NGC 3896. NED classes NGC 3893 as SAB(rs)c: though some notes at NED say they can't detect the bar. Neither can the NGC Project as they say Sc I. It has a lot of HII regions but MOST show blue rather than HII pink in my image. My color data was weak so that might be responsible. Also, 2" resolution may be needed to see THEM and I had far less than that. NGC 3896 is classed by NED as SB0/a: pec by NED and SB0-a by NED. It appears to be a mess to me. I see no real structure but my seeing wasn't very good. There appears to be some tidal debris south of NGC 3893. Most of this appears to me to have come from NGC 3896 reducing it to the mess it is today. They were discovered by William Herschel on February 9, 1788. NGC 3893 is in the original H400 program. My log from that on the night of May 4, 1984 using a 12.5" f/5 scope at up to 150x on an excellent desert night reads: "Interesting spiral with much detail though ill-defined nucleus. Four other faint galaxies are seen in the same 50x field. Seems to be about 10-11th magnitude."

While Sloan data covers the field NED has only a few redshift measurements for this field as yet. I wasn't going to prepare an annotated image but then noticed some really small and faint galaxies were much closer than larger and brighter galaxies. Because of that I went ahead and made one. Just don't expect much info on it.

To the west-southwest of NGC 3893 is MAPS-NGP O_171_0077430 at 440 million light-years It appears to be highly distorted and may be two interacting galaxies. My resolution is too poor to tell much and NED has nothing useful on it.

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

Related Designations for NGC3893

NGC3898

NGC 3898 is one of 4 galaxies in the NGC 3898 galaxy group. NGC 3888 on the far right of my image is also considered one of the 4 but its distance is nearly twice as great by redshift. NGC 3821 well out of the field to the right is a third member. I haven't been able to determine what the 4th member is. The only other galaxy in the image at the right distance is a faint, tiny dwarf galaxy, LEDA 2832082. It is only 7500 light-years across. I find no indication it's the 4th member. This field is in the bowl of the Big Dipper on the edge of the Abell 1377 galaxy cluster which lies over 10 times further away but does explain the many galaxies in the image in the 680 to 750 million light-year range.

NGC 3898 is a rather drab low contrast spiral. The arms are only slightly blue and barely stand out from the disk of the galaxy. The bright disk portion of the galaxy is about 60,000 light-years across but it has some very faint outer star clouds if you look really closely. Including these, it is some 144,000 light-years across. It would be a good target for those putting many hours into an image to pick up its full extent.

NGC 3888, while considered part of the 4 galaxy group is almost twice as distant by redshift at 120 million light-years. If correct I measure its size at 75,000 light-years with a hint it may be 80,000 light-years across in a deeper image than mine. Its spiral structure is easily seen compared to that of NGC 3898. There is a galaxy below its right edge. I found nothing on it. It is listed as a separate galaxy, SDSS J114728.03+555720.1 at NED. Could it be at about the same distance as NGC 3888 and thus have interacted with it or been a result of something interacting with NGC 3888? Also, NED shows what it calls a separate galaxy on the edge of an arm of NGC 3888. To me, it is no different than star clouds in the galaxy. Another NED lists as part of the galaxy. Why this one isn't also so listed I don't know. In any case, I've included it in the annotated image.

Both of these galaxies were discovered by William Herschel on April 14, 1789. NGC 3898 was my target since it is one of the objects in the original Herschel 400 observing program. Somehow I entered the coordinates wrong on my to-do list so it moved it high. I'd not noticed the other two NGC galaxies would be in the frame or I'd have moved NGC 3898 east and a bit north. At least I caught them, just framed poorly. My log entry from April 16, 1985 on a fair but humid night with somewhat reduced transparency at 60 to 150 power reads: "A small puff of a galaxy with a bright Nucleus. Seems more circular than the writer says. Forms a low power pair with NGC 3888. This galaxy is in Ursa Major rather than Leo as the guide says. That makes up for NGC 3655 that is in Leo but the guide says is in Ursa Major." Apparently, I was seeing only the center of NGC 3898 as I'd not call it small. That may explain why I saw it more circular than it is. The humidity may have been hurting more than I realized. Also, I was more concerned with errors in the preliminary H400 list than saying much about the galaxy itself.

There's a third NGC galaxy in the image, NGC 3889. It appears to be a member of the Abell cluster. I didn't mention it so likely it was lost in the humid sky. While it looks much smaller than the other two, that's because of its distance. I measure it at 160,000 light-years in size. It was discovered by Lawrence Parsons on April 1, 1878. While the Lord often took credit for discoveries by his assistants this appears likely one of those he actually found. I need to borrow Sherman and Peabody's Wayback (or is it WAYBAC?) machine to verify this.

Being high in the north above the ecliptic it isn't surprising there were no asteroids in the image. Otherwise, it is a rather typical image for background objects. I do want to point out a pair of Alberio like galaxies on the far left of my frame, one orange and one blue. They even have similar redshift distance. NED lists the blue one as a rejected candidate quasar. I assume its blue color is involved with it being taken as a possible quasar.

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

Related Designations for NGC3898

NGC3906

NGC 3906 s an SB(s)d spiral about 54 million light-years distant in Ursa Major about 5 degrees south of far more famous M109. The UGC describes it as: "Eccentric bar. A large number of thin arms." I agree about the eccentric bar but the "thin arms" comment doesn't fit any image I've seen of this galaxy. I also have trouble with it being a d galaxy. That means widely separated arms of which I saw none. Just a disk full of star clusters. The NGC Project simply says SB... for a classification. That makes more sense to me. There is a blue star-like object at the eastern (left) end of the bar the NED considers part of the galaxy though some sources say it is a blue star in our galaxy. I tend to agree it is just a star. The disk of the galaxy is very off center from the bar. This makes it a sloshed galaxy but I found no mention of this odd fact.

The galaxy was discovered by William Herschel on March 9, 1788. Being rather faint it didn't make either of the Herschel 400 observing programs.

It appears to have one companion in the northeastern part of my frame. A rather featureless oval blue blob of a galaxy with little information on it at NED. It's rather hard to classify a blue blob so apparently, that hasn't been attempted. Most catalogs ignore it though it did make the 2MASS and ASK general catalogs.

In preparing the annotated image I came across a bright red star that wasn't there. At first, I thought it might be a new nova. Looking at the POSS plates the star didn't exist. When I checked the Sloan image it was there after all but in the wrong place. I then found a star on the POSS plates not on my image nor Sloan's. Checking that position in SIMBAD I found it was LHS 316, a high proper motion star. It is moving nearly 2" of arc per year. Since the POSS plates are 50 years old it had moved some 1.5 minutes of arc. No wonder I was confused. Fortunately, the Sloan image was recent and it hadn't moved far though was on the "wrong" side of the white star below it. The star is M4.5V so is a red dwarf. Finding it on surveys I find it is some 26 light-years distant so a rather nearby star. Its magnitude is 15.1 in blue light, 13.26 in V (rather close to visual) and 12.3 in red light. It gets far brighter in IR. Since the Sloan image included 3 IR bands it was blood red in their image. I've been making an annual movie of Barnard's star moving through the heavens. Do I now add this one to the list? It is moving only 20% the speed, however. A snail compared to Barnard's star.

There are several galaxies at about 2.2 billion light-years in the image but I found no galaxy cluster or group at that distance. Instead, I found one at 3.29 billion light-years both by photographic redshift and by spectroscopic redshift of its Bright Cluster Galaxy whose position I used to mark the cluster's location. It is listed as having 19 members. No other galaxy with redshift data was at that distance. One nearby was at 3.55 billion light-years but that seems too distant to be a member.

Why all but one of the annotated galaxies are east of NGC 3906 I don't know.

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

Related Designations for NGC3906

NGC3912

NGC 3912 is a peculiar galaxy in northeastern Leo about 96 million light-years distant though non-redshift measurements put it at about 80 million light-years. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 6, 1785 and is in the second Herschel 400 observing program under this designation. It was independently recorded by his son John on March 26, 1827. One or both got the position somewhat wrong and Dreyer didn't catch this giving each an entry in what became the NGC catalog. Thus it is also NGC 3899.

What interested me was two things. First, it is classified as a peculiar galaxy that has a long bar that is very clumpy. It also has two dark clouds of either obscuring dust of maybe just they are areas of few stars. I prefer the dust idea. I found no mention of these in the literature even though they are rather prominent. East of the eastern dark cloud is what is likely a star cloud not related to those in the bar but quite separate. As I'm trying to get all objects in the two Herschel 400 projects I can from my latitude it was an early entry on my to-do list. I'd not seen the lone bright spot nor the dark areas in the survey images I looked at though now that I know they are there they are easily seen. Why they are stronger in my image I don't know as I did nothing different in processing this image as I've been doing now for several years.

Again I had a rather poor night for transparency so I had to limit annotation to objects brighter than magnitude 21.5 rather than my normal 22.9 limit. This cost a lot of distant galaxies that on a typical night would have been easily picked up.

There are a lot of galaxies at about 1.4 billion light-years in the image. This would appear to be a widely scattered cluster. NED indicates there is such a cluster centered just north of NGC 3912 with 13 members and no size estimate. It is MaxBCG J177.50824+26.51845 for those wishing to dig deeper.

Only one quasar candidate is in the image. It seems either there are few if any in an image or it full of quasars or candidate quasars. Arp claimed that quasars were created by active or peculiar galaxies. To him, their redshift was not cosmological but due to their odd properties. He claimed they clustered around such galaxies giving a few examples. But he ignored fields like this one with few such objects around a peculiar galaxy. He even hung on to this idea even after the HST resolved the galaxy the quasar was in proving they were cores of active galaxies rather than objects emitted by closer galaxies. At least several who attended his lectures in his final years said that was often brought up in his lectures and he was holding out for this otherwise long-dead idea.

No asteroids appeared in this image even though I doubled the luminance time to try and make up for the poor transparency this early May night.

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

Related Designations for NGC3912

NGC3917

FGC 1315/UGC 06802 is a flat galaxy in Ursa Major two degrees below Phecda, the southwestern star in the bowl of the Big Dipper. While I'm fascinated by flat galaxies like this one, NGC 3917 is a nice flocculent spiral, a type with many arm segments rather than the full arms of a grand design spiral. So this was a double for me. I centered on the flocculent spiral since it was the more photogenic of the two. By redshift, FGC 1315 is 67 million light-years distant while NGC 3917 is closer at 53 million light-years. Both are further away by Tully Fisher measurements, 74 and 57 million light-years respectively. Either way, they are apparently more than 10 million light-years apart so not related, just in the same line of sight as seen from our galaxy. There are quite a few galaxies scattered around the field. Assuming their redshift distance is correct, FGC 1315 has a diameter of about 45,000 light-years while NGC 3917 is much larger at 75,000 light-years. It is not seen edge on so its flatness can't be determined very well, but appears to me to also have a very small central bulge. In fact, it did make the 2 micron flat galaxy catalog as 2MFGC 09297. This catalog has less strict standards for flatness.

NGC 3917 was discovered by William Herschel on March 17, 1790. It's not in either H400 program.

The annotated image gives the details. Only one quasar is in the image. While a couple of very small galaxies look like short asteroid trails they are just other, likely very distant, edge on galaxies that might have made the Flat Galaxy Catalog if closer so their flatness could be measured. The bulge must be no more than 1/7th the galaxies length to make the catalog.

Lots of red galaxies can be seen in the lower right corner of my image. They are likely members of the galaxy Cluster ABELL 1387, whose center is out of my field of view. It is listed as having 50 to 79 galaxies in a cluster that is 28 minutes of arc across. That's more than the height of my image frame. It is class III which means it has no obvious center with no condensation toward the center. Its distance is listed at about 1.68 billion light-years which is a good fit for the redshift of the few galaxies in the corner of my image with redshift data.

LEDA 2399182 is a very blue compact galaxy between NGC 3917 and the ABELL cluster. Seen on the Sloan Survey image it appears it could be a double core galaxy. Or possibly two very blue round galaxies seen nearly atop one another. At a distance of only 67 million light-years, they are very small with the diameter of the object being only about 4,000 light-years. If two each is likely about 3,000 light-years across. Compact indeed.

This one was taken on about the best night I had last November but winds were running over 40 mph that night. I can work up to about 30 mph but at 40 there's some elongation of the stars. Though oddly it isn't even across the field with sometimes stars right near each other showing different elongation. I am still scratching my head over how that can be. When I get high winds seeing is usually poor. Another oddity is that it was about average this night.

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

Related Designations for NGC3917

NGC3938

NGC 3938 is a very photogenic, face on, many armed, blue spiral galaxy that is often imaged. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 27, 1785. It made my list because it is on the original Herschel 400 list. I take these when nothing on the main list is well positioned, or in this case, seeing wasn't up to the object I wanted to capture. In fact, it was very poor this night. So poor none of the H alpha regions I wanted to capture survived the seeing, especially since I took red when it was lowest and in the worst seeing. I hoped its longer wavelength would help but it didn't. In fact, it is so red starved I couldn't bring it up to even close to blue without creating so much color noise I gave up trying. The core is likely somewhat redder than I show it though it isn't nearly as red as in most galaxies. Another for the proverbial reshoot list that rarely happens.

It is located near the back leg of Ursa Major. Redshift puts it some 48 million light-years away though a single Tully Fisher estimate says 55 million light-years and an estimate using a 2005 type II (not 1A) supernova comes up with 58 million light-years. Flip a three sided coin. I also saw a paper saying 43 million light-years so make that a 4 sided coin. Using the 48 million light-year distance I get a diameter of about 77 million light-years making this a good sized spiral galaxy.

My visual note from April 16, 1985 with my 10" f/5 at up to 150x on a fair but humid night reads: "Large, round, apparently face on galaxy with an even halo. It has a starlike object (core?) but not at its center. Is this an off-center nucleus of just a 14th magnitude field star?" This photo shows it to be the nucleus and the galaxy to be rather unsymmetrically distributed around it leading to my off-center comment.

A couple background galaxies are seen through it, two had redshift data so are marked on the annotated image. There are several galaxy clusters and groups in the image as well. Many have a good spectroscopic redshift for the Bright Cluster Galaxy but only a photographic estimate for the cluster itself. Both are shown with a "p" denoting the photographically determined value. In some cases, there was no redshift for the BCG which is noted with /na. In other cases, it used the same photographic redshift. When that happened I only note the photographic redshift value once (no second value or na). UvES denotes quasar candidates with only photographic redshift estimates. Objects with only coordinates for a designation are noted by type GG for galaxy group, GC for galaxy cluster, G for Galaxy, Q for quasar etc.

The glow about the middle of the far right edge is from a bright star just off the chip. I should have cloned it out.

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

Related Designations for NGC3938

NGC3945

NGC 3945 is a double ring galaxy in Ursa Major just above the bowl of the big dipper. It is about 65 million light-years distant (64 by redshift). It is classed by NED as SB(rs)0+ with a LINER core. The NGC project says more simply SB0. It reminds me of NGC 2859 I posted February 2012. It too has a double ring structure but is seen a bit more face on. I see a small fuzzy blob on the east-northeast outer edge of the outer ring. NED shows nothing at its position. It is seen on the POSS plates so is real. Is it the remains of something NGC 3945 is digesting? I have no idea. A Hubble image of the galaxy's core shows several dust clouds I wasn't able to resolve. An amateur's processing of the HST data can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/77452188@N05/7281940538/lightbox/ . The galaxy lacks a central bulge. At one time it was thought such galaxies didn't have a central supermassive black hole at their core but the HST data says it likely has one, about twice the size of the one in our core though the data is fuzzy enough it could also indicate no black hole but that is of a low probability from how I read the papers. At 65 million light-years the galaxy is about 120 thousand light-years across, about the size of our galaxy if some current papers resizing the Milky Way are correct.

NGC 3945 was discovered by William Herschel on March 19, 1790. It is in the original H400 program. My log for that on the night of April 16, 1985 hurt by humidity at up to 150x says; "Small, round galaxy with a bright inner circle surrounded by a tight halo. Apparently, this halo wasn't seen by the writer's 8" telescope." I'm wondering if I saw the outer halo or just the round disk off the bar.

There are two other NGC galaxies in the image. To capture them I had to put NGC 3945 on the right side of the image. They are NGC 3975 and NGC 3978. They share almost the exact same redshift so are a true pair though NGC 3975 is much smaller. Still, NGC 3975 is rather large at 90 million light-years. So that makes 3978 enormous at over 250,000 light-years measuring the plumes. Just the arms give a size of 190,000 light-years. Still a monster of a spiral galaxy. So where did the plumes come from? I'd think NGC 3975 would be highly distorted if it interacted with it but it looks pretty normal with no sign of plumes. To complicate things NED shows two tiny galaxies against the disk of NGC 3978. If real and in the disk as NED seems to indicate then they could be the remains of its latest meal of dwarf galaxies. That could account for the plumes. Problem is they are right on fragments of spiral arms and appear in my image as nothing more than star clouds similar to several others seen along the arms. So are they galaxies that both happened to align with arms or star clouds in the arms? I feel the latter is most likely but have pointed them out in the annotated image but with the notation G?

NGC 3975 was discovered by Lawrence Parsons, often known as Lord Rosse, on February 21, 1874. NGC 3978 was discovered by William Herschel on March 19, 1790. It isn't in either H400 program.

There are quite a few galaxies in the annotated image at about 135 million light-years. They are likely members of the Abell 1402 cluster centered just below the lower right of my image. NED lists it at a distance of 137.5 million light-years with a radius of 12.5 minutes (about half the vertical size of my image) It is of group class 0 which has 30 to 49 galaxies. Sufficient to take in most of the galaxies at that distance in my image.

In the upper right corner is a very blue object. Some catalogs call it a galaxy, others a galaxy with a very active AGN and still others say it is a blue quasar. Not taking sides I've listed it as G/AGN/Q to cover all three possibilities. Nearby are a trio of three galaxies (lower right of the G/AGN/Q. While NED lists the faintest (upper left of the three) the other two aren't in NED at all so get a question mark for a label. No way to know if they are related or not unfortunately

Several galaxy clusters with a Big Cluster Galaxy at their core are marked in the image, often at a distance that is closer than the anchoring galaxy. Obviously, they both can't be right. While the anchoring galaxy is rather obvious in my image I don't see the other members but I listed the count shown at NED anyway.

The blue blob on the very lower left edge of the image is due to the 8th magnitude, A3 star, SAO 15664 hitting the very edge of the CCD. I probably should have cloned it out but didn't think of that at the time.

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

Related Designations for NGC3945

NGC3953

NGC 3953 and UGC 06840 are a pair of galaxies with the same redshift putting them about 55 to 60 million light-years distant. They are located in Ursa Major about 1 1/3 degrees south of Phecda, the southeastern star in the bowl of the "Big Dipper". NGC 3953 is a beautiful multi-armed, somewhat flocculent barred spiral with a very odd arm structure on the eastern (left) side. Two arms seem to suddenly join and end in a bunch of star clusters. The Sloan image shows the star-like object at the tip as very green. Still, I think it really is a star. Sloan's multiband color filter system can create green stars. I thought this odd arm system might have attracted Arp's attention but apparently not. UGC 06840 in the southwest corner of my image has almost exactly the same redshift but is a very different galaxy. It has a very low surface brightness except for the bar that causes it to be classed as a barred spiral of the Magellanic type. The two galaxies make for a nice contrast.

NGC 3953 was discovered on March 12, 1781 by Pierre Méchain. This discovery was incorrectly applied to NGC 3992 until 2006. Until then its discovery was credited to William Herschel 8 years later on April 12, 1789. This is how it got into the first Herschel program which was developed in about 1984. My log from May 4, 1984 with a 12.5" f/5 scope on a great desert night at up to 150x reads; Similar to M-31 though much smaller. Much arm detail is seen. Very bright nucleus."

There's another low surface brightness galaxy about halfway between them, at least as seen from our galaxy. It is MCG +09-20-023. Unfortunately, I can't find any redshift data for it so I have no idea if it could be related to the first two.

Also in the annotated image are a couple objects identified as being both a quasar and a galaxy. They must show a quasar-like spectrum but certainly are faint for a typical quasar. Normally they are so bright they hide any hint of the galaxy they reside in. These two are dim enough some of the galaxy is visible though my seeing makes that hard to see.

There seems to be a family of galaxies at about 1.1 billion light-years centered on the lower left part of my image. I found no cluster listed for that location though I looked only about 15 minutes beyond the image edge.

As "usual" conditions were poor for this image, especially seeing. Some frames had seeing of 2.75" while others were over 6 though the luminance frames used were no worse than 4". The highly varied seeing caused havoc with color. Some stars in a frame were far worse than others. This created some color flares around stars that might be blue for one and red for another. I did a lot of local deconvolution trying to get the stars to similar sizes but finally gave up. It will be easier to reshoot this one next year. Due to the poorer than normal seeing for the luminance as well I lost a lot of detail that I'd hoped to capture. There's some interesting fine dust detail near the core of NGC 3953 that shows in the best luminance frame but is lost in the other three I used. I took some 25 frames and used the "best" 10 though calling some of them "best" is rather stretching things beyond reason.

This one reminds me of a buzz saw blade slicing through space.

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

Related Designations for NGC3953