NGC4183

NGC 4183/FGC 1368 is a near edge on flat galaxy in western Canes Venatici 3.75 degrees south of the far more well-known M106. It is classified as SA(s)cd?. Except for a faint dust lane, I see little spiral structure. I suspect seen face on it may be a very flocculent galaxy being made up of many short arm segments rather than full arms. The two blue objects at the top are large star clusters. This one went on my to-do list as an interesting flat galaxy. While it was discovered by William Herschel on April 14, 1789 it isn't in either of the two H400 observing programs which surprised me. It is about 53 million light-years distant by both redshift and non-redshift measurements. That agreement is unusual. If you look closely you will see it has faint extensions off either end. They are longer on the northern side. I suspect these are faint arms rather than plumes. The nearly doubles its size. Measuring the obvious bright portion it is about 55 million light-years across but when the faint extensions are included it nearly doubles to over 106,000 light-years in size. Likely a longer exposure than my standard 40 minutes would show it as even larger.

Off the southern end and in the faint extension as a tiny object NED considers a separate galaxy at about the same redshift. I have to wonder if it, like the bright ones to the north isn't just another star cluster in the galaxy. If that side is rotating toward us that might explain the small redshift difference. Even assuming the closer 49 million light-year distance it is less than 1000 light-years across. Awfully small for a galaxy but not a star cloud. Those in the northern end are larger yet not considered separate galaxies.

This was a night of better than typical for spring transparency so goes down past 23rd magnitude so I picked up and was able to label galaxies down to 6.4 billion light-years distance. One galaxy is labeled from the KISSx catalog. That stands for Kitt Peak National Observatory International Spectroscopic Survey Red spectral region - candidates. The x is for candidates.

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

Related Designations for NGC4183

NGC4214

NGC 4214 is a nearby dwarf galaxy in Canes Venatici with massive star formation regions per the Hubble Space Telescope images of this galaxy. None showed up in my LRGB image. Another I should have used H alpha on apparently. Nor do they show in the Sloan survey image of this galaxy. Being close redshift data is highly unreliable. It gives a distance of about 25 million light-years. 10 to 13 million light-years seems more reasonable given the resolution of details that can be seen in it. Also, this is about the average of modern Tully-Fisher and Red Giant Branch measurements. Assuming a distance of 10 million light-years its diameter would be about 23,000 light-years. It is classed by NED as IAB(s)m and Irr III-IV by the NGC project

It is also known as NGC 4228. Seems John Herschel managed to get the RA one minute wrong one pass and later get it right. This resulted in the two numbers. The 4214 entry was the correct one in case you were wondering.

To the southwest is UGCA 276. While its redshift is the same as that of NGC 4228 I assume it is more likely at about the same distance as NGC 4214 as its non-redshift based measurements are about the same as those for NGC 4214. NED classes it simply as Im: It is likely gravitationally bound to NGC 4214. William found it on April 28, 1785. John found it at the wrong position on April 27, 1827. It is in neither of the H400 programs.

I've prepared my usual annotated version of the image. As in the past, I accidentally ran across some galaxies, not in NED that should be. Usually, these are blue but not this time. Also, I found far more than usual. Those totally absent from NED are marked with a gray question mark. A couple were picked up by the 2MASS survey but were not included in NED's version of the Sloan survey even though they should have been. These are marked with a green question mark. Again, I didn't go looking for these. I just noticed them while looking up ones nearby that were in the database. How many more were missed I haven't a clue. Apparently, the automatic algorithm that is used to pick these up failed somehow.

Two galaxy clusters are in the image. WHL J121610.0+362836 at 3.6 billion light-years is to the northeast of NGCV 4214. The anchor galaxy's position is the same as that of the cluster but NED only had redshift data on the cluster. It is small containing only 6 galaxies. No size was given. The other is GMBCG J184.02151+36.15300 at 4.4 billion light-years. Here the Big Cluster Galaxy's redshift matches that given for the cluster. It is nearly directly south of the first cluster at the very bottom of my image. I moved the label off to the side so as not hide a few possible cluster members. The cluster is listed as having 39 members but again no diameter is given for the cluster's size.

The image contains more very distant galaxies than usual with nearly all being over 1 billion light-years away with a couple over 5 billion light-years away. Quasars are even further of course.

HST info
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/14/

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

Related Designations for NGC4214

NGC4216

This field was taken not because it is rarely seen but because of the Herschel 400 object, NGC 4216 and it is a great field. NGC 4216 is an Sab(s)b: galaxy with HII emission and LINER properties indicating an active nucleus. It is considered a member of the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. It's distance, however, is rather vague. Virgo Cluster galaxies have large orbital velocities making cosmological redshift useless as some of these values range from way too high a redshift for the accepted 50 to 60 million light-year distance to even a few that are blue shifted. NGC 4216 is listed by APOD at 40 million light-years. Several sources say it is near the center of the cluster but that is thought to be some 50 to 60 million light-years distant. Non-redshift values at NED are all greater than the 40 million light-year figure. To me its resolution both in my image and others is more akin to a 50 to 60 million light-year distance though this galaxy is considered rather anemic in that star formation is low and its supply of HI is also low. Note its rather red color indicating few young stars even far out in the arms. Still, I'll bow to the experts and say it is 40 million light-years distant. That makes it about 100,000 light-years in size. It has a close companion with similar redshift, VCC 0165. It has an odd curving plume to the northwest indicating it is interacting with NGC 4216.

As I stacked the frames an odd faint spike of light came in at an odd angle. Straight as an arrow it had to be a reflection but those come in perpendicular to the edge, not at an angle. Then my sleeping brain (it was 1 a.m.) finally woke up. A quick check turned up Ken Crawford's APOD showing a huge looping star stream. http://imagingdeepsky.com/Galaxies/NGC4216/NGC4216.htm Also this version http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/411099-the-galaxies-star-streams-ngc4216-and-ngc4449 Both of these used many many hours and I'd only used 40 minutes of luminance. Still, I picked up some of it. Then I looked at the log entry my system makes and saw I had planned on at least 4 rounds of data over 4 nights but the system got clouded out and never completed it. That's the problem with processing months later, I forget things like this.

NGC 4216 is the only galaxy in this field that is in either Herschel 400 list, being in the original. My comment from April 20, 1985 using my 10" f/5 on an only fair night at 100x reads simply "Large, nearly edge-on galaxy with a bright center." Usually, I wrote more than that. Humidity was high and transparency low according to my notes. William Herschel found it the night of April 17, 1784. Later Arnold Schwassmann found it on September 14, 1900. That got the IC3064 listing.

The other two NGC galaxies in the image are also Herschel discoveries. NGC 4206 on the same night as NGC 4216 and NGC 5222 a few days earlier on April 8, 1784. You might wonder how he could find 4222 and miss 4216 a much bigger and brighter galaxy. His scope was extremely difficult to use compared to what we are used to. He'd point it to a declination and record what he saw drift by. A clock gave him the RA as it crossed the center and the declination of the center of his field was known to make declination easier to estimate. Also, his field of view was tiny compared to what we are used to. NGC 4222 was just too far north and likely near the southern edge of his field that pass. The other two would be caught when he could map the strip one field south a few nights later.

NGC 4206 is a flat galaxy meeting the lesser qualifications of the 2 micron flat galaxy catalog. It is a Sa(s)bc: galaxy with a LINER active core. Redshift puts it about 48 million light-years distant while non-redshift measurements place it further away. So is it close to 4216 or not? I have no idea. Assuming it is 50 million light-years away it is about 90,000 light-years in diameter.

NGC 4222 has a similar redshift as NGC 4216 and a wide range of non-redshift values putting it more distant than NGC 4216. Still, it's similar redshift may indicate it is gravitationally linked to 4216 so I'm going to assume it too is about 40 million light-years distant. That makes it the smallest of the three at 40,000 light-years across. It is flatter than 4222 and thus makes the Flat Galaxy Catalog. Seen nearly edge on it is obvious it has only a slight hint of a central bulge. It is listed as an Sc spiral with HII emission.

There is often a 4th galaxy considered part of this group, IC 771 which is listed as a member of the Virgo Cluster Catalog as VCC 142. But its redshift puts it some 280 million light-years distant. While Virgo Cluster Galaxies can have redshifts well beyond their distance this is way too far out of line. No way it is actually a member of the cluster. It is a respectable 60,000 light-years across and is listed as a barred spiral. It was discovered by Rudolf Ferdinand Spitaler on April 1, 1891 using the 68cm refractor at Wien University Observatory. Now known as the University of Vienna and Vienna Observatory. The annotated image shows many other galaxies listed as members of the cluster with even larger redshifts indicating many VCC galaxies are not really members of the cluster but background galaxies. Several of the annotated VCC galaxies carried a second entry in NED without the VCC label. Only one of these is noted. Usually, the non-VCC entry had very vague coordinates, sometimes with an over 4 degree error circle. The one that did agree within a few seconds of arc is listed in the annotated image, otherwise, even though the coordinates match the huge error circle and different redshift value indicated this is only a guess for which galaxy is meant. Most originated from radio galaxy catalogs with a wide beam and thus poor positional information.

One very faint asteroid is marked in the lower right corner. Why I off centered my target galaxy I don't know. Since I was trying for the plume caused by VCC 165 being ripped apart I'd have expected I'd have moved it east rather than west. Maybe I was confused which side of the galaxy it was on. Trying to remember back to April without any note on this fails my memory any more.

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

Related Designations for NGC4216

NGC4217

NGC 4217 is an edge on galaxy often seen in wide field shots of M 106 but deserving of being imaged for itself though this is rarely done for some reason. It is classified at NED as SAb with HII emission. I didn't bring out any of these in the RGB image. At first glance, I thought it looked a bit twisted as there's more to see on the west side than the eastern half. But I think this is due to a spiral arm coming around toward us on the western side that is going away from us on the eastern side. Thus the eastern one is mostly hidden by the galaxy itself. But there may be a twist as well. The galaxy was discovered by William Herschel on April 10, 1788. It is in Canes Venatici and about 57 million light-years distant by redshift at 64 million distant by a couple of Tully Fisher measurements. Since it may be a member of the Virgo cluster I'll sort of average the two and call it 60 million light-years. That puts its faint outer reaches at some 125,000 light-years across. Likely its stars extend much further as there's really no edge to a galaxy, the stars just get less and less dense without any clear end. Using the brighter portion it is about 100,000 light-years across. While imaged with M 106 it is nearly 3 times more distant than its famous neighbor so they are not related, just they share about the same line of sight as seen from earth It is in the Herschel 2 observing program but not one I've logged visually for some reason. The nearby bright stars do make this one a bear to process as they sent lots of light flying around.

NGC 4226 is the other NGC galaxy in the image. It is not a companion of either M 106 or NGC 4217 as it lies some 340 million light-years distant and is part of the LDCE 0877 galaxy group. Thus there are several other galaxies at that distance in my image. Thanks to its much greater distance it is the largest galaxy in the image with the bright edge measured to a diameter of 128,000 light-years, more than the faintest extent of NGC 4217. It wasn't seen by William Herschel when he recorded 4217 but was discovered on March 19, 1828, nearly 40 years later by his son John Herschel. It is classed as Sa pec? by most sources. The NGC project says S:... whatever those dots mean. The colon is about the same as a question mark. It has a close, nearly starlike in my image, companion with almost exactly the same redshift.

NGC 4217 was discovered by William Herschel on April 10, 1788. It is in the second H400 program. NGC 4226 was discovered by his son John on March 19, 1828.

The annotated image shows all galaxies NED had listed as galaxies that had a redshift distance estimate. Most interesting of these to me is BTS 109 a dwarf elliptical galaxy with a redshift that likely makes it a companion of M 106. I measure its diameter at only 2,500 light-years. That is indeed a dwarf galaxy and a faint one as well. It's near the eastern (left) edge of my image which puts it about half way between NGC 4217 and M 106.

This was taken the only good night in January though I did capture a few photons of 5 objects a week earlier through questionable skies. Unfortunately, a bright moon rising and clouds moving in prevented me from getting but one frame of red and green. Still, the night was good enough that that was sufficient. Fortunately, I got lucky and there were no satellite trails in the single red and green frames.

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

Related Designations for NGC4217

NGC4236

NGC 4236 is a galaxy in the M81 group. Spitzer/Hubble has measured the distance at 11.5 million lightyears based on the brightness of several 19th magnitude blue stars in the galaxy. They show in my shot but I can't easily point them out. This is a really faint galaxy. Its apparent size is about the same as M81 but it is far fainter. M81 can be seen in binoculars. NGC 4236 is a difficult object in any size telescope showing only as a faint smudge and then only the core region is seen. As you see in the photo it is very blue. That means there's a heck of a lot of star formation going on in it or has gone on in the recent past. Yet even these bright stars can't make it very bright. One theory is it is heavily obscured by dust in our own galaxy. Very long exposures with wide field systems do show a huge dust cloud in our galaxy in this direction. If I ever get wide field capability I'd like to try and photograph it. Still, it is very thin and doesn't seem to redden anything behind it like a cloud thick enough to obscure much would. So its faintness is still a bit of a puzzle.

(Edit: it was discovered on April 6, 1793. I expected it to be in the original H400 program but somehow it didn't make the cut. It is in the second program but unfortunately, my notes from that were lost in the move to Minnesota from Nebraska in 2005.)

It has one companion galaxy Holmberg 357b. That is the brightest small galaxy in the shot. It is to the left of NGC 4236 toward the top, right of a rather bright star. It's the biggest and brightest galaxy in the shot besides 4236 itself. Sort of a very small Magellanic Cloud.

A large number of background "stars" in this image are really galaxies. If seeing had been better it would be easier to separate them but when you see a fuzzy star compared to a fainter one that isn't as fuzzy, the former is a galaxy. It's quite possible there are more galaxies in this shot that stars. Another reason I don't buy the "heavily obscured" explanation for why this galaxy is so faint.

Edit: This is a 2008 image before I researched the field so there's no data on the background galaxies nor was I annotating the images back then. While I did a minor reprocess of the TIF image from 2008 this one could use either a reshoot on a better night or a full reprocessing from the original data. My comments say, "Clouds rolled in about the time the moon was getting out of the way. Unfortunately, seeing wasn't very good as the air temp was very warm by day and cooling rapidly by night. That ruins my ability to capture a really clear image. Being very high in declination my window to photograph this one is limited so I used two nights, neither were any good. But we'll go with what I was able to get.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=8x10' RGB=4x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC4236

NGC4242

NGC 4242 is a very low surface brightness spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici about 1.75 degrees south of much better known M106. It may, in fact, be related to M106 as its distance is 33 million light-years based on cosmological redshift and 22 million light-years by an average of various non-redshift measurements that are likely more accurate. This is about the same as the 23.5 million light-year distance often cited for M106. Assuming it is a companion they are a minimum of only about 700,000 light-years apart much closer than we are to M32 (for now that is). In its center where I'd expect the core to be there is a starlike object. It's PSF is similar to a star indicating whatever it is unresolved at my seeing. Is it the core or is it a star in our galaxy that happens to be perfectly aligned?

Fortunately, the HST has taken an image of the core and it seems to be just a field star. It is classified as SAB(s)dm. It has little, if any, spiral structure. What passes for arms seem more radial than spiral and are mostly just star clouds and star clusters. While it is very blue little dust is seen so this may be its last gasp at star formation though radio observations show a HI disk that's 3 minutes across while the galaxy is 5 minutes on its major axis. That makes its visual size only about 33,000 light-years, so it isn't a large galaxy.

It was discovered April 10, 1788 by William Herschel. Its low surface brightness makes it a visual challenge, maybe that's why it isn't in either of the two Herschel 400 observing programs. Still, its large angular size makes it a great imaging target that few seem to know about. Its low surface brightness would challenge those working from rather bright skies.

In the annotated image I did include three quasar candidates. NED's primary designation for these, however, is just a star. Only photographic redshifts are available for these and likely the cause of both their extreme distance estimates as well as possible quasar status. Watching these almost always turn into confirmed stars rather than quasars I tend not to include them in my annotations. Several known quasars with accurate spectroscopic redshifts are also noted in the image. Arp seemed to think these were nearby objects ejected from active galaxies. NGC 4242 isn't active in the way he seemed to think caused quasars so I wonder when he made of all them around this galaxy?

The annotated image shows quite a few galaxies at about 920 million light-years. While NED indicates the 4 south of NGC 4242 are the SDSSCGB 39935 cluster this leaves out the others scattered further out.

Seeing turned lousy during the collection of color data leading to some nasty color issues with halos of vivid red, green and blue around the brighter stars, especially those that are nearly white which are rather common in the image. I had a heck of a time dealing with these flares and halos. Seeing hit 6" at times compared to the less than 3" for the luminance data. I probably should have reshot the color but didn't realize this was a problem until I recently went to process it and it was lost in the sun's glare. I managed to process out all but a hint of the problem but it took way too much time. If it hadn't have been such an interesting galaxy I'd likely have reshot it next year.

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

Related Designations for NGC4242

NGC4244

NGC 4244, sometimes called the Silver Needle Galaxy, is a nearby edge-on spiral in Canes Venatici. It is classed as SA(s)cd: with HII emission. The blue stars in such HII regions drown out the pink color of the HII emission. I will need to add H alpha filtered data to pick that up by holding back the glare of the stars formed in these regions. The distance to this galaxy is usually put at about 15 million light-years putting it too far to be in the local group or M81 group. It is sometimes considered part of the M94 group. It is about 81,500 light-years across if the distance is assumed to be 15 million light-years. Redshift puts it further away at 23 million light-years. The redshift velocity is pretty inaccurate at close range so I'll go with the other determinations that say 15 million. That also fits with the resolution seen in the HST image. See below for more on that. It was discovered by William Herschel on March 17, 1787. It is in the second H400 program.

Looking through the literature I see a lot of disagreement about the bright object at its core. Some say it is the core, others it is a field star. Looking at most images, including mine it looks like a star. In fact, I was going to come down on the side of it being a star but then looked at the PSF (Point Spread Function) of it in my data. That shows it certainly is not a star. This is where the numerical data trumps what the eye sees. Compared to stars of similar brightness on the image, the PSF is very wrong for a star. But looking for more, just before posting this I checked the Hubble Legacy Archive. They had a great image of the core region of the galaxy. I did a quick process of part of the frame. At over 70 meg I had to severely crop it for bandwidth limits. Those with the right software can go into the site and see the full frame. It clearly shows the core to look very much like a miniature M104. Apparently, it is round in all images I've seen of the galaxy only due to our lack of resolution compared to the HST above the atmosphere. So that "star" is definitely the core of the galaxy. Now why the core is so obvious but the dust lanes so obscure I don't know.

Then looking further I found this paper using some of the same data I used for the mono image above but processed further. It calls the disk a "flattened nuclear central cluster". You can read all about it at http://www.gemini.edu/node/10989. No need for hip waders as it is a press release rather than a scientific paper.

My blue data was severely hit by clouds (I sound like a broken record over this of late). I suspect this has reddened the core region some with it showing slightly more orange than it really is. Though web images show quite a wide range of core color from very orange to all blue. I suspect I'm close but just a bit too orange. I just couldn't push the weak blue any further without stars going wonky on me. I refuse to process one part of an image differently than another in this respect so left it what I feel is likely a bit too orange though most of the stars do appear about right to me when calibrated against Sloan photometric data.

Also, seeing wasn't what I'd hoped for reducing my resolution. I think the star clusters should stand out more if I had better seeing. I might eventually get around to trying again under better conditions. Edit: Still hasn't happened.

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

Related Designations for NGC4244

NGC4273

I had both NGC 4270 and NGC 4273 on my to-do list. 4270 for its plumes and shell-like structure and 4273 for it sloshed appearance. Somehow I never realized they were in the same field. Turns out 6 other NGC galaxies, an IC galaxy and a bright rather nearby Abell Galaxy Cluster managed to fit in the frame as well as many quasar candidates. This turned out to be one interesting field. There's enough here for several posts. The field is about one degree northwest of far more famous M61 in Virgo. Most of the galaxies lie in what is called the W cloud rather than the Virgo Cluster itself. This cloud is about twice as distant as the Virgo cluster itself though many of its members are in the VCC (Virgo Cluster Catalog). It turns out only one NGC galaxy in this frame is actually in the Virgo Cluster. Another could be in either or neither. The rest are in the far less known W Cloud.

I'll start with NGC 4270 which is simply classified as S0. To me, it is a shell galaxy with a well defined sharp-edged shell on its eastern side and a diffuse one with a plume on the western side. Yet nothing I find mentions this. The closest I found was a 1994 paper on the morphology of E-S0 galaxies that says; "An S0 with a disky lens surrounded by a boxy and rather peculiar envelope." All I saw before taking this image on the POSS plates was a hint of the structure that looked more like plumes so that might have something to do with it. Shells usually mean a galaxy is in the process of digesting the last galaxy it consumed. Seen against the southwestern edge of the shell is the irregular galaxy VCC 367. Both have the same redshift. Could it be NGC 4270's next meal? I found nothing at all on this irregular galaxy to suggest they were even related but for about the same redshift value. The bright portion of NGC 4270 is about 52,000 light-years across. Including the shells and plume, it is some 115,000 light-years across. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 17, 1786 but isn't in either of the Herschel 400 observing programs.

NGC 4273 was the other galaxy on the to-do list. It is a very sloshed spiral galaxy with a drawn out arm to the south on the eastern side. It, like NGC 4270, is a member of the W Cloud rather than the Virgo Cluster so is about 120 million light-years distant. It is classified as an SB(s)c galaxy and about the only blue galaxy in a field of mostly red and dead galaxies. Sloshed galaxies are usually considered to be caused by tidal forces of a much larger nearby galaxy but that doesn't seem to be the case with this galaxy. Other than a few references to the core being off center or the galaxy being asymmetric I found nothing on it sloshed condition. Including the faint regions to the south, it is some 93,000 light-years across. The main blue region is 40,000 by 60,000 light-years in size. It was also discovered by William Herschel the same night as he found NGC 4270. It is in the original Herschel 400 list. My log from April 20, 1985 describes it as round galaxy brighter toward the center. Apparently, I didn't notice the core was so far off center.

Just to the east of NGC 4273 is NGC 4277. It is listed as SAB(rs)0/a. It has two faint, low contrast S-shaped arms and a faint outer halo that extends some distance from the main nearly circular form that extends to the northwest and southeast. Its main disk is 25,000 light-years across with the faint outer halo extending to 57,000 light-years more than doubling its size. It too was found by William Herschel that same April night.

The largest and brightest galaxy in the image is NGC 4281, an S0+ galaxy with an extended outer envelope and a hint of a dust lane running through the core. Redshift puts it slightly more distant than the other W cloud members. This may be more due to its motion around the cluster's center of mass than a real distance difference. Still, using the redshift-distance I get a size of 100,000 light-years for its bright region and 165,000 light-years for the diameter including the extended halo. It too was found by William Herschel the same night as the others and is in the initial Herschel 400 list. My comment the same night as 4273 but after a thick haze had moved in called it small with a starlike center. That haze must have been really doing a number on it. My notes say fog shut me down soon after. I should have gone back to it again but apparently never did.

Southeast of NGC 4273 is NGC 4268. It is an SB0/a: galaxy that has a faint Saturn like appearance with a bright round core and a ring structure that is oddly not included in its classification. A reference based on an image with the Crossley reflector notes it has a faint spiral structure. But after that there's no mention of it yet it's quite evident in my image which has only normal processing. It is some 60,000 light-years across. Even though I've seen it in a 6" scope Herschel somehow overlooked this one. In fact, it wasn't discovered until 76 years later when Eduard Schönfeld found it on April 1, 1862 using a 6" refractor.

NGC 4259 is the westernmost NGC galaxy in my frame. It is an S0 galaxy that is thought to be seen edge on. At least from this perspective, it is rather featureless. Being S0 it isn't surprising no dust lane is seen. It is about 45,000 light-years across. It was discovered by John Herschel on December 27, 1827.

At the top of my frame somewhat hidden by a bright star is NGC 4266 an edge on SB(s)a? spiral. Redshift puts it about 87 million light-years away. That's about halfway between the Virgo Cluster and the W cloud. But redshift of members of each but especially the Virgo Cluster can be highly distorted as members, due to the high mass of the clusters, have high velocities. For that reason, I will assume it is a member of the Virgo cluster and thus about 60 million light-years away. Using that distance it is about 42,000 light-years across. Larger if it is between the two clusters and 84,000 light-years if it is in the W Cloud. It was discovered by Albert Marth on May 26, 1864.

The last NGC galaxy in the frame is NGC 4282 listed as an S0/a galaxy only 60,000 light-years distant and thus the only one certainly in the Virgo Cluster. In both my image and the Sloan image a dust lane is visible. My image shows a blue band in its disk just north of the dust lane. Only hints of this are seen in the Sloan image. Why it is so strong in my image I don't understand. I see it easily in the raw data before any processing other than calibration. Of the 8 NGC galaxies in the frame, this is the smallest at only 16,000 light-years across. It too was discovered by Albert Marth the same May night as NGC 4266.

IC 3153 is the last major catalog galaxy. It is an Sc(r) near face on spiral that's 540,000 light-years distant. Its spiral arms seem rather messed up but there's nothing nearby to cause it. Could be due to something it digested a billion years ago I suppose. It's about 75,000 light-years across. It was found on April 8, 1894 by Hermann Kobold. He was a German astronomer at Strasboug Observatory. He found 38 IC objects using their 18" refractor. This may sound odd but only 3 of these were stars one being a double star. Back in visual days, it wasn't unusual for stars at the limit of visibility to be mistaken for a galaxy. To have this happen only 3 times out of 38 objects is actually good.

Many of the background galaxies are a bit over 1 billion light-years distant and cluster toward the lower right corner. They belong to the Abell 1516 galaxy cluster which is listed at 20 minutes in diameter and containing some 32 members. That count seems low to me. It is listed as morphology class II-III. Class III has no core galaxy, Class II has two or more major galaxies. I put the label across the center of the position as NED shows it. That's a bit south of LEDA 097407 that certainly appears to be the major galaxy of the cluster in my image. What is off the screen I don't know. Often a core galaxy of a cluster will be listed as cD but the only cD galaxy is well north of the center area which is unusual but not unheard of.

NED lists many UvES objects "Ultraviolet Excess Source" in the image. All could be quasars but so far haven't been confirmed and only have photographic redshift determinations. These can sometimes go astray.

Also in the frame are two asteroids, one very faint, the other rather bright. The trail has a break in the middle because conditions went south during the taking of this image and it stopped for a bit. Then improved enough that it could be finished. I got the blue data before it closed in again. The green and red frames were taken a different night. Even that night was poor so only one green was usable. With only blue recording the bright asteroid I removed it from the image since the asteroid was no longer in the frame when red and green data was taken several nights later. This last year and a half have been horrid for capturing data. I'm hoping this spell will eventually come to an end.

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

Related Designations for NGC4273

NGC4274

NGC 4274 is an odd barred spiral in Coma Berenices about 50 to 60 million light-years distant by redshift. Other measurements put it much closer or further but also average about 55 million light-years. If correct it is likely a member of the Virgo Cluster. It is classed as (R)SB(r)ab LINER. What drew my attention to it is the odd dust lane that suddenly veers in toward the core of the galaxy. Dust lanes down a bar are common but these don't also follow the spiral arm pattern. Also, they are usually rather weak compared to the dust lanes in the spiral arms. This one is a narrow lane that seems to define the inner edge of the spiral arms that form a ring-like structure getting strong as it approaches the bar then suddenly veers across the bar and toward the side of the core. The core is oval but at nearly right angles to the bar with each end rather pointed. The dark lane runs to one of these pointed ends. In IR light papers indicate there's an inner bar and ring structure at nearly right angles to the large outer bar and ring. This apparently is what is causing the bright core region to be misaligned with the main bar.

It was discovered by William Herschel on March 13, 1785. It is in the original H400 program. My short log note from May 20, 1985 on a humidity limiting night at 50x reads; "Large, highly oval galaxy. Form a quadruple with NGC 4245, 4283 and 4278."

As is often the case, in doing the annotated image I came up with a galaxy not in NED even though hundreds of far fainter one are included. It is noted with a question mark right (east) of NGC 4274.

Below NGC 4274 is a dwarf galaxy. LEDA 213976, whose redshift puts it closer than NGC 4274 but is just a tiny smudge by comparison. The difference while rather great isn't unheard of due to the orbital velocity of a satellite around its host galaxy. Could that be the case here? I find nothing either way on this.

Then to the lower right of LEDA 213976 is a real puzzle. It is in NED twice at slightly different positions. Once as 2MASX J12194996+2940172 at 230 million light years and as SDSS J121949.99+294017.5 at 3.7 billion light years. The listed magnitudes are 19.99 and 19.7 respectively. This seems to be the same galaxy listed twice. I've seen this many times but not with such a severe redshift difference. NED lists the 2MASS entry with a question mark. So apparently they prefer the Sloan data though never do explain the question mark after the z value for the redshift. Both positions are within the 0.65" error circle of the 2Mass object and 0.5" error circle of the Sloan image. Both reside in near the center of the single object shown in the Sloan image at that position.

Note my image is presented south at the top not north as I nearly always orient my images. The galaxy just didn't look right "upside down". I guess my brain wants the near side of a galaxy at the "bottom", at least in this case.

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

Related Designations for NGC4274

NGC4298

NGC 4298 and 4302 are a commonly imaged pair of galaxies in the Virgo galaxy cluster about 60 million light-years away. Redshift puts them a bit further than this. They share nearly the same redshift indicating they could be quite close together. This, however, appears rather unlikely as there's no real sign of interaction. If they were as close as they appear to be from our perspective distortion of NGC 4302's edge on disk should be obvious. It shows no sign of being warped. Both galaxies do show a large faint outer halo than their obvious disks but again, these would distort if they were really close and this isn't seen.

NGC 4298 is a somewhat face on flocculent galaxy. NED and the NGC project class it as SA(rs)c. If the outer halo is included it is over 90,000 light-years in diameter. The bright blue disk itself is about 50,000 light-years across.

NGC 4302 is seen virtually edge on and has a very dense dust lane that completely hides the core. The bright part of the disk is nearly 100,000 light-years wide and 11,500 thick. If the outer halo is included its dimensions are 150,000 by 30,000 light-years. While it shows no sign of a central bulge the ratio of the outer halo is only 150:30 = ~5:1. The Flat Galaxy Catalog requires a ratio of 7:1 as seen on the Palomar plates. Apparently, they include this faint outer halo. If only the bright disk was used it would qualify. Except for the ends of the disk it mostly surprisingly red. This may be due to the dust rather than old stars though it does show areas of blue, especially at the southern end near a foreground star. The same paper cited in my NGC 5777 post shows a similar, very small plume in this galaxy. They obviously got the directions wrong in their image and don't show the entire galaxy. What they do show has stars and other features subtracted out making it impossible for me to determine where they are looking.

Both NGC galaxies were discovered by William Herschel on April 8, 1784. Both are in the second H400 program.

I get an odd illusion with this pair. I see NGC 4298 as a buzz saw and NGC 4302 has having had the buzz saw cut off its northern arm as it passed through the galaxy coming toward us and our galaxy. Pure pareidolia as I doubt these two are interacting in any way though they may in the future as their redshifts are similar.

The annotated image shows catalog names for objects with names that are not just its coordinates. Many come from the Virgo Cluster Catalog (VCC) most of which aren't members of the cluster. VPC is the Virgo Photometric Catalog and it too contains non-cluster galaxies.

East of NGC 4302 is LEDA 169144 which is a really large spiral at 172,000 light-years in diameter if its redshift distance of 1.19 billion light-years is correct.

As usual, I ran into a rather bright fuzzy blue galaxy not in NED. Seems there's at least one in most of my images. As usual, it is noted by a question mark.

The sky was far from transparent this night but otherwise didn't harm the image. Due to lack of transparency, its limiting magnitude is about 21 which is 1.5 below my norm under good skies.

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

Related Designations for NGC4298