NGC5349

Three NGC galaxies and a UGC galaxy plus a lot of background galaxies make for a rather nice field. Two of the NGC galaxies and the UGC galaxy are members of the same group while the fourth lies nearly 100 million light-years further away. The field is found in Canes Venatici.

The "largest" galaxy in the image is NGC 5351 at about 170 to 180 million light-years. It is a nice Sb type spiral with a pseudo-ring and an interesting faint outer region to the north. It was discovered by William Herschel on May 16, 1787 though isn't in either of the Herschel 400 observing lists. NED lists what looks to me like a star cloud in one arm as a separate galaxy. In the Sloan image, it does appear nearly perfectly round while the other blue objects in the arm are elongated. It has a similar redshift. I suppose it is possible it is the remaining core of something NGC 5351 is digesting but I favor it just being a star cloud being so centered in the arm like the other blue knots. It is some 140,000 light-years across so a rather large spiral.

To its southwest is NGC 5349. This one appears smaller but being half again more distant it is really much larger at 183,000 light-years. It is seen rather edge on but its barred structure is obvious. It was discovered by J. J. Mitchell working for the Earl of Rosse. The NGC project credits the Earl with its discovery though it appears he just took credit for his assistants' discoveries.

Further southwest is NGC 5341. This nice spiral lies at about the same redshift and thus likely distance as NGC 5351. It is only about 86,000 light-years across. Still a very respectable size for a spiral. NED lists it as an S? spiral while the NGC project says SBd a rather surprisingly large discrepancy. Like NGC 5349 the NGC project credits its discovery to the Earl of Rosse while it was likely discovered by R. J. Mitchell. He found both on the night of March 24, 1857.

The 4th major member of this image is UGC 8778 to the upper right. A rather featureless mostly red near edge-on spiral. Only a hint of a dust lane is seen in this nearly edge-on spiral. It too is at about 180,000 light-years and 85,000 light-years in diameter so nearly the same size as NGC 5341.

Of the background galaxies, there's a group at a bit over 800 million light-years and another group at a bit over 1.23 billion light-years. The group at a bit over 800 million light-years appears to belong to the Abell 1812 galaxy cluster that is centered a few minutes of arc below the center of my image. It is listed as having up to 49 galaxies so a rather sparse cluster. No size is given for it that I found. I didn't find any group associated with those at 1.23 billion light-years.

In all the years (over 9) I've used the Paramount I've never had to throw out a frame due to a tracking issue until this image. One red frame showed a faint second image of brighter stars about 3 seconds of arc to the southeast. Since this was not guided and I wasn't around (well I was but sleeping) I don't know what happened. I guess one out of over 15,000 frames isn't a bad percentage but I'd like to know what happened. I see no trail between the two images though for those bright enough to have trailed in a fast move it would be lost in the glare. It appears about 1% of the light is in this second image, just enough to show up in the bright stars. I threw out the frame as the single good red frame still gave me good color.

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

Related Designations for NGC5349

NGC5351

This field is located in eastern Canes Venatici. It consists of three NGC galaxies. NGC 5351, the brightest of the group was seen by William Herschel on May 16, 1787. It is not in either of the Herschel 400 programs. Apparently, the other two were too faint for his telescope. NGC 5341 and NGC 5349 weren't discovered until March 24, 1857, by R. J Mitchell. He likely was using the Earl of Rosse's 72" scope to find them.

NGC 5351 and NGC 5341 have about the same redshift so are likely related. NGC 5349 is nearly twice as distant so unrelated. Interestingly all three have cores that are much brighter than their outer disk structure. The makes seeing all but the cores rather difficult. What few amateur images I found of this field sometimes missed their outer, quite blue, very low surface brightness disks. In fact, my exposure time for them, especially NGC 5349 was too short to do its outer disk justice. It is rather lost in the noise. The sky was unusually dark this night so I expected good transparency. It seems it was dark because of lousy transparency and not so great seeing. That misjudgment on my part means it should go on the reshoot list but that likely will never happen.

Could NGC 5341 and NGC 5351 have interacted in the past? While NGC 5341 looks like an obvious spiral its classification as one has a question mark. While it looks small in my image, including the faint blue plumes I measure it at 80,000 light-years in size, a quite respectable spiral. But are the faint outer arms due to interaction with NGC 5351? I found nothing in the literature (not much) on this subject. NGC 5351 is much brighter so its outer disk is also brighter. Still, I had to work to bring it up and out of the noise. It is twice the diameter of NGC 5341 at 143,000 light-years across. Now that's a big spiral.

Much more distant NGC 5341 with its very faint disk is actually the largest of the three in diameter at 156,000 light-years. It just looks small due to its more than a quarter billion light-year distance. At the very bottom of the image, its glow just getting into the frame is another galaxy at about the same redshift as NGC 5349. I wish now I'd pointed a few minutes south of where I did to have picked it up as these two may be related.

Near the bottom of the image, there are many galaxies of varying distances. I'd have suspected a cluster but except for a 3 at 810 to 840 million light-years they ranged from 370 million to 2.7 billion light-years. Then I found near the bottom was the center of the ABELL 1812 cluster. A very sparse cluster with no core galaxies. I found little on it but it is listed at 850 million light-years. A bit further than the three in the area. Scattered across the frame, however, are other galaxies about this distance. I found no size listed for the cluster. If these widely scattered galaxies are also part of the cluster, likely considering it is so close they could appear scattered from our viewpoint, then the cluster while centered at the bottom covers much of this frame.

Below NGC 5351 is a faint smudge. It has a bright round core to the southwest end with a faint glow from the southwest to northeast. It looks a bit like a very sloshed spiral. But its only identity I could find at NED is [TT2008] 181. NED classifies it as a dE. The round part certainly fits but what about the extended portion. Unfortunately, my underexposure of the field limits what I can see in my image. While even fainter in the Sloan image after enhancement it fits what I'm seeing in my image. SIMBAD classifies it the same but says it is a galaxy in a group of galaxies with no mention of which others are part of the group. With no distance data, it remains mostly unknown.

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

Rick


http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/NGC/NGC5351-NGC5349-NGC5341/NGC5351L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/NGC/NGC5351-NGC5349-NGC5341/NGC5351L4X10RGB2X10ID.JPG
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/NGC/NGC5351-NGC5349-NGC5341/NGC5351L4X10RGB2X10CROP125.JPG

Related Designations for NGC5351

NGC5364

NGC 5360, 5363 and 5364 are a trio of galaxies in Virgo and members of the famous Virgo Galaxy Cluster about 60 million light-years from us. I'll tackle them in reverse order.

NGC 5364 is a nice spiral galaxy which redshift puts at 70 million light-years but other estimates say more like 63 million light-years which seems more reasonable. NED calls it SA(RS)bc pec with HII. The NGC project's more simple classification is Sbc/P. They are in agreement that it is peculiar. It has a rather diffuse inner spiral structure that ends with a nice ring. Two major arms spiral off this ring, each making slightly more than a complete 360 degree trip around the galaxy. Most of the HII regions are small but one large one is obvious in my image with faint hints of pink throughout the rings. More would likely be seen if I added H alpha data but I've not taken any. At 63 million light-years, its angular size indicates it is about 125,000 light-years across. One of the larger spirals in the Virgo Cluster.

It was discovered by William Herschel on February 2, 1786. My entry from the original H400 program with my 10" f/5 at 50x on a poor night with fog reads: "Large, oval galaxy with irregular edges to the halo. Brighter toward the center but no definite nucleus seen. In the same high power field with NGC 5363." On April 7, 1828 his son John found it, got the coordinates a bit wrong. That resulted in it getting the NGC 5317 designation.

NGC 5363 is a strange galaxy that NED calls I0? and the NGC project describes as S0-a. I tend to agree with the NGC Project as it has some interesting dust structures in my image I'd expect in a S0 galaxy with some Sa traits. It has a LINER core so its black hole is apparently finding something to chow down on. A star right near the core doesn't help with resolving that region of the galaxy. Redshift puts it about 65 million light-years away. Several papers refer to a short, fine dust lane running along its minor axis. The only dust I can resolve is along the major axis. As elliptical-like galaxies go, this is a more interesting one. Measuring the very outer halo of this galaxy and assuming the 65 million light-year distance it is also about 125,000 light years across its major axis. If it is really somewhat elliptical in shape and isn't exactly face on then it would be even larger. Just the inner regions where we see the dust lanes are 70 million light-years across. It too was found by William Herschel but on the night of April 19, 1874. My entry from the original H400 program had little to say about it. It simply says, "Small, bright oval galaxy with NGC 5364 in the same field."

NGC 5360 is a much smaller galaxy that NED says is I0 same as NGC 5363 but without the question mark. The NGC project disagrees calling it SB0-a. I'm not sure what to make of that. Redshift puts it 67 million light-years away. This seems a bit too big. It likely is closer but moving away right now in its orbit about the cluster making it appear further away than it really is. Though the only non-redshift measurement I found puts it almost 75 million light-years distant. Assuming the shorter distance it is about 32,500 light-years across. It was found by Albert Marth on May 8, 1864.

I find it interesting that NGC 5363 is quite red, NGC 5360 white and NGC 5364 rather blue in color. Sort of a patriotic image -- Red, White and Blue.

The fourth NGC galaxy is at the upper left of my image. It lies far beyond the Virgo Cluster at over a half billion light-years distant. NED lists it as a compact galaxy with star formation. No other classification is given. The NGC Project also says "Compact" but makes no reference to star formation. It is NGC 5373 and was also found by Albert Marth the same night he found NGC 5360.

I expected to find quite a few dwarf or at least small members of the Virgo Cluster in the image as such galaxies far outnumber the major galaxies in the cluster. But only 4 were seen. Three along the right edge and one near the left edge. Only the latter had a designation beyond that of its coordinates. IT is CGCG 046-013 with a redshift distance of 83 million light-years. So it could lie beyond the cluster if that is a true distance indicator.

In preparing the annotated image I ran into some issues I'd not come across before. In some cases, NED lists the redshift distance as questionable but doesn't say in what way or by how much. For those, I've put a question mark after the distance which is based on this questionable redshift figure. Then I ran into some galaxies at distances far beyond those of the quasars in the image or even quasar candidates (UvES). One had a redshift putting it 11.39 billion light-years distant with a z of well over 2. No way I can see a galaxy at that distance. But NED lists these as galaxies rather than quasars or quasar candidates nor does it indicates some issues with the redshift value. These are listed G? in the annotated image. NED listed many IR galaxies that are bright enough to show in my image if their visual brightness was similar. Apparently, they are far fainter in visual light as I couldn't find any of these, even those 4 magnitudes brighter than my visual limit. After finding the first dozen or so were beyond my reach I didn't investigate the rest unless it was listed at magnitude 18 or brighter. None of these were seen in my image however so even that was a waste of time. Some of the galaxies were very faint. While visible in the uncompressed TIFF image I used to make the annotated image some are extremely faint in the compressed JPG image so if you don't find them that's the reason. Though all I checked in the JPG image do show if you blow up the image a couple times.

As usual, I ran across several galaxies not in NED at all. Again this was only because I double checked to be sure I hadn't missed them wading through all the invisible IR objects. Since I did this only with a few that interested me I again suspect quite a few more were also overlooked by the automatic software that picks this data out of the Sloan Survey data.

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

Related Designations for NGC5364

NGC5371

I took Hickson 68 back in 2008 but missed picking up NGC 5371. My techniques in 2008 were poor compared to today. Still, for some reason, I put Hickson 68 too low in the new field missing the edge of the odd plume of NGC 5353 as well as an interesting UGC galaxy but did pick up NGC 5371. Why I framed it poorly after the first goof I don't know but I managed it. Thanks to my technique being rather poor in 2008 I found combining the two wasn't working well. The older image was just not good enough to combine without the obvious change in noise level. So, for now, this will have to do.

This field is located in eastern Canes Venatici with all major galaxies at a distance of about 125 million light-years. So it appears NGC 5371 may be part of the same "local group" as the members of Hickson 68. Though the redshift distance to NGC 5371 varies quite a bit from the non-redshift distance of only about 93 to 110 million light-years. If that is right then it isn't related after all. In fact, I rather doubt its redshift distance is correct. Assuming the 125 million light-year distance to the Hickson 68 group then its spiral member NGC 5350 is some 130,000 light-years across and NGC 5371 is a whopping 220,000 light-years in size. Even moving it to 93 million light-years, the median non-redshift distance at NED it is still a very large 160,000 light-years across. The higher resolution I get for it also seems to indicate it is closer than its redshift says.

NGC 5350 shows some faint drawn out arms indicating it is interacting with its companions. The SO galaxies NGC 5353 and NGC 5354 share a common halo indicating they are certainly interacting. The Starburst nature of NGC 5350 and the AGN status of NGC 5353 and LINER status of NGC 5354, while not necessarily due to interaction likely are in this case. While Hickson 68 is listed with 5 members, all NGC galaxies there's a 6th apparent member, LEDA 099754. I don't know why it isn't considered part of the group -- too small? Unfortunately, glare from the K5 6.5 magnitude HD 121197 makes seeing the full extent of the plumes of NGC 5350 difficult. It must have hit a speck of dirt near the CCD to have created the glare spikes it did. This image was taken before my annual spring cleaning of the optics.

Arguing for NGC 5371 being closer than its redshift indicates are the HII regions with strong H alpha emission I am able to resolve in it without the aid of H alpha data. They show up as the pink objects along its arms. I'd not expect that at the greater distance and find it surprising even at the closer distance estimate.

NGC 5350, 5353, 5354 and 5355 were discovered on January 14, 1788 by William Herschel but aren't in either Herschel 400 list.
NGC 5358 was found by Edouard Stephan on June 23, 1880 having been missed by both Herschels for some reason.
NGC 5371 was found by William Herschel on the same January 14, 1788 night as 4 of the 5 Hickson 68 members. It is on the Herschel 2 400 list. It was later found by John Herschel on March 18, 1831 and due to a position uncertainty listed as NGC 5390. Since there's nothing at his position for NGC 5390 its identity as NGC 5371 isn't certain but most catalogs list them as the same object, even SIMBAD which sometimes rejects such probable duplicates.

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

Related Designations for NGC5371

NGC5375

NGC 5375/5396 is a very large spiral galaxy in southeastern Canes Venatici about 120 million light-years distant and about 120,000 light-years across. NED classifies it as SB(r)ab while the NGC project says SBb. The galaxy was probably discovered by William Herschel on May 16, 1784 and entered into the GC by John Herschel at the position William Hershel provided. But not finding anything at that position John decided it was the same as his discovery on May 15, 1830 which he entered separately in the GC. Dreyer then followed suit doing the same with the NGC so it now has two listings. NGC 5396 is likely the preferred listing since it is the one with the correct position. I started doing dual entries in numerical order and am sticking with that for consistency. It appears to have two companions one to the northeast and another to the southeast. At least they have very similar redshifts. They are about 10,000 and 20,000 light-years across. While the one to the northeast has starburst activity it doesn't seem this is related to any interaction with NGC 5375. Neither seems perturbed. It's not in either of the H400 programs.

The annotated image shows a rather odd grouping to the west-southwest of three or 4 objects. One appears to be a blue galaxy but it's not listed in NED so labeled with a "?". The other blue object is listed in NED as a galaxy at 1.4 billion light-years. Between these is an orange object. I've listed it as LEDA 84081 an ultraluminous IR galaxy with starburst activity and HII emission. A lot to get out of that tiny orange blob. NED has a separate second entry with a position only a couple hundredths of an arc second different and a redshift that differs at the 4th decimal point. That doesn't list it as ULIRG or with HII or starburst activity. Considering the resolution of earth-based scopes can't separate objects that close I'm suspecting these two different listings of the same object, just that they got slightly different positions for it and didn't get the spectral data for the other determinations. They do differ by 0.9 magnitude though one is listed as being in green light and the other isn't specified. It is the brighter so if in red light that would be explained by its strong IR emission and orange color. However in this case we have the HST to our rescue. It took ONE near IR image of this area. I did a quick process of it. It's quite interesting. I have no idea what it means so I'll just let the image speak for itself.

Dawn prevented me from capturing the second green image but since there were no satellites in it one is sufficient so I never tried for a second.

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

Related Designations for NGC5375

NGC5383

NGC 5383 is a rather strange looking barred spiral in Canes Venatici about 110 million light-years from us. It has two very faint plumes to the east and west sides. Including these the galaxy stretches some 165,000 light-years though the bright region spans only 77,000 light-years, still a respectable size for a spiral galaxy. It was discovered by William Herschel on Apr 9, 1787. While it made the Herschel II observing list that isn't what put it on my to-do list. Arp had a category for "wind effects" that this one seems to fit due to its windswept appearance. It has been much studied, mostly about how the dust lanes feed the starburst activity around the core at the inner ends of the bar. This has resulted in two round star clouds east and west of the core making it look like it has three cores though the two extras are made up of a few dozen supermassive, short-lived stars. Then above and below the core are two elongated regions of star formation containing far more but not as supermassive stars. In 2005 SN 2005CC was seen at the eastern end of the southern elongated cloud. Its spectrum was quite peculiar. While I found papers on it no one seemed willing to classify it other than say it had similarities to SN 2002CX which is considered a peculiar type IA supernova, whatever that means.

NED lists a quasar candidate (QC) seen through the eastern end of the northern elongated cloud. Their photographic estimate puts it nearly 11 billion light-years distant. It is listed at magnitude 19 which should be obvious but even looking at the Sloan image I'm unable to pick it out with any certainty. The line drawn on the annotated image points to the pixel with the coordinates given for its position which matches a bright area but it doesn't have the PSF of a point source and appears to coincide with a star cloud on raw HST data I looked at. I have some doubts about this one put included it anyway.

To the south is the very low surface brightness UGC 8877 which is classified as being a Magellanic type dwarf galaxy. It is some 33,000 light-years across so a rather reasonable size barred dwarf. It is likely a true companion to NGC 5383 though appears undisturbed so likely isn't the cause of the plumes of NGC 5383. I found nothing on their source.

As usual, the annotated image notes all objects with redshift data. When the only designation for the object uses lengthy coordinates I just note its type. UvES again is used for ultraviolet sources that have photographic redshifts indicating they could be quasars.

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

Related Designations for NGC5383

NGC5400

NGC 5400 is a very large S0 galaxy in Virgo about 350 to 360 million light-years distant. Thus while it is in Virgo it is far beyond the Virgo Galaxy cluster that lies 6 times closer. While its edges are hard to determine my measurement shows it to be about 1.7 minutes across and thus over 170,000 light-years across at 350 million light-years. NED, however, puts its diameter smaller at a bit less than 1.2 minutes which would be only 120,000 light-years across. I'm unable to explain the difference in angular size measurement other than edges are fuzzy but certainly easier to measure than that difference would indicate. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 15, 1787. It isn't included in either Herschel 400 list, however. My image shows its color a lot more red than I expected from other images. I suspect conditions may have had something to do with shifting my fainter objects to the red. They were awful. I had to shut down and never did get back to redo it.

The galaxy seems to anchor the WBL 483 galaxy cluster whose center is only about a minute of arc from this galaxy as noted by NED. I used the galaxy as the marker in the annotated image though technically that's not quite correct. The cluster has no diameter listed. NED says it is richness class 3. If this is the same as Abell's richness scale then it has 130 to 199 galaxies. Most the galaxies in the image tend to be likely members of the cluster.

The galaxy pair IC 968 is an apparent member of NGC 5400's galaxy cluster. This pair was found by Guillaume Gigourdan on May 6, 1888. The pair appears to be interacting. My exposure didn't go as deep as I'd have liked and missed the debris around the western member of the pair. Long exposure images show the eastern member as rather unharmed by the encounter. While their radial velocities are somewhat different this doesn't mean they are at different actual distances, only that they may be passing each other at a fairly high rate of speed. Assuming a middle value of 350 million light-years for their distance the western galaxy is almost 60 thousand light-years across while the eastern galaxy is a tad over 60 thousand light-years across. NED, however, sees them as considerably larger than I do giving sizes of 66,000 and 82,000 light-years respectively. Quite a difference and again I can't understand why the difference. Usually, we agree rather closely.

It may have something to do with the horrid conditions that night. The observatory shut down after the blue frame. I had only one frame of each color thanks to the conditions. Also, the background was 10 times brighter than normal for a moonless night that this was. The blue frame was about 16 times brighter and may account for the color of NGC 5400 though the stars came out about right. The observatory shut down because the sky was too bright. The cloud sensor thought it was well into dawn but that hadn't started. Checking SpaceWeather.com I found there was some auroral activity that night but nothing of this intensity that would hit the southern sky like this. But their numbers may be deceiving and there was a bright but featureless aurora going on. One problem with sleeping while your computer gathers data. I didn't realize it had shut down early. I only found the problem when I went to process it months later. Too late to retake the data until next year. Not sure it is worth it. But should at least redo the color as it is highly suspect.

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

Related Designations for NGC5400

NGC5403

NGC 5403 and its companion MCG +06-31-042 are a pair of galaxies about 130 million light years distant in the constellation of Canes Venatici. MCG +06-31-042 is listed at NED as simply a spiral galaxy though a note at NED calls it a "compact elliptical object". NGC 5403 is an edge on spiral that the NGC project classes simply as Sb but NED goes further saying it is a barred spiral with spectral lines SB(s)b: sp. The colon indicates some question about this classification. Being so edge on with heavy dust it's not surprising there's a disagreement here. It was discovered by William Herschel on May 16, 1787. It isn't in either H400 program.

While MCG +06-31-042 appears normal NGC 5403 is rather distorted. The disk is warped with the northern end warped to the northeast and the southern end bent to the southwest. The dust lane is slightly askew from the plane of the disk and there's a faint halo all around the galaxy. A second dust lane runs from just left of the brightest core region nearly straight south to the edge of the bulge at an angle to the main dust lane. Are these anomalies due to interaction with MCG +06-31-042? I found nothing either way on this issue. All papers I found are rather mute as to whether these two are interacting. It would take some type of interaction to distort NGC 5403 though this could be due to a galaxy it consumed in the recent past. That might be the short nearly vertical dust lane is debris left in the path of an infalling companion it ate recently -- or not. Notice the very faint blob just below the lower end of the galaxy. Could that be the remains of its last dinner? Seems possible to me but again, I found nothing in the literature on it.

There's a possibility NGC 5378 (not yet imaged by me) is involved. It has about the same redshift and lies about 42 minutes of arc to the southwest. It is a somewhat distorted looking fuzzy ringed barred spiral. I suppose they may have interacted in the past causing both to be slightly distorted. In that case, MCG +06-31-042 is just an onlooker. Also Arp 84 the "Heron eating a fish" pair of interacting galaxies is only 47 minutes south-southwest. It is not likely involved being somewhat further away by redshift. In any case, this is a region of interesting galaxies.

There are a couple of galaxy clusters in the image. NED had spectroscopic data for the Bright Cluster Galaxy but only photometrically determined redshift for the cluster (noted with a "p" in the annotated image). In these cases there is rather good agreement between the two.

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

Related Designations for NGC5403

NGC5410

NGC 5410 and UGC 8932 are a pair of apparently interacting galaxies in Canes Venatici about 180 million light-years distant. NGC 5410 is classed as SB? while its companion is an irregular Magellanic type galaxy. A large plume seems to come from NGC 5410 sort of toward UGC 8932 but it extends well beyond the companion. A much fainter plume comes off the other end. The galaxy itself is rather off-center looking. UGC 8932 doesn't seem massive enough to have caused this, however. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find much at all on this pair. They seem rather isolated with nothing else in the image having their redshift. In fact, nothing comes within a billion light-years of this pair. Now that's isolated. Their redshifts are almost identical which seems more than a coincidence. Both have bright star knots and are quite blue in color indicating a lot of new stars in both. NGC 5410 was discovered by William Herschel on April 9, 1787. It isn't in either Herschel 400 observing program, however.

The field contains several galaxy clusters including an Abell cluster that may encompass some of the others. One rather bright asteroid snuck into the top of my image traveling almost due west. The image contains several quasars as well which Arp thought related to active or strange galaxies like these two. Though he spent a lifetime trying to prove this he never could and his idea has pretty much died with him. One object that NED identifies as a quasar it also lists as an AGN. Its PSF in my image is that of a galaxy rather than a quasar and it is only about 2 billion light-years distant. Many galaxies in the image are further away. To me, the AGN label fits better than quasar though its core is very bright making seeing the galaxy difficult, even for the Sloan telescope. Yet another quasar/AGN is listed at 2.5 billion light-years. It is more starlike but has the PSF of a small galaxy the same as the other one, just not as obvious to the eye.

This was taken on about the only really transparent night of this spring. I used to have this transparency as the norm but the last two years such nights have been few and far between. I probably should have taken advantage of it but the object was already past the meridian when I started so I was limited to what I could do and still be within my Tpoint map and region of best seeing. Still, conditions were holding and I could have gone over to using a guide star but I was working in automatic mode not realizing this was such a good night. The system can't change over without my assistance and I was snoozing away at the time unaware of the night's quality. It had started out pretty poor.

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

Related Designations for NGC5410

NGC5424

This galaxy cluster is far too large for my 0.2 square degree field of view. It has a diameter of 134 minutes for an area of just under 4 degrees or nearly 20 times my field of view. I did image its center region, however. The average distance of the cluster is about 270 million light-years. Major members of the cluster in my limited image include:

NGC 5409 an interesting galaxy classed as (R')SAB(s)b. It was discovered by Wilhelm Temple on April 25, 1883.
NGC 5416 a chaotic Sc or Scd spiral found by William Herschel on March 19, 1784.
NGC 5423 an S0 galaxy. Discovered by Wilhelm Temple on April 25, 1883.
NGC 5424 an S0 galaxy that appears to have a couple shells also found by Temple on April 25, 1883.
NGC 5431 an apparent one arm spiral classed as S? More likely it is a two-armed spiral, possibly barred, whose arms overlap in a way to appear as one arm. Another Temple discovery that same night.
NGC 5434 A classic Sc spiral. It too was found by Temple that same night.
NGC 5434B/UGC 08967 an Sbc nearly edge-on spiral
NGC 5436 a spiral classed as S0/a even though it has a strong dust lane. Also found by Temple but on June 28, 1883.

There is a faint stream of light heading east from NGC 5431 the S? galaxy. It is seen in the Sloan images as well so is real. I don't know if it is a plume from the galaxy or a faint nebulous patch of IFN or something similar. Might be worthwhile spending many hours on it to see if it can be determined which it is. For now, I'm going with it being a plume.

The only quasar in the image is [HB89] 1400+095. It is listed twice at NED with two slightly different positions, one with a larger than normal error circle. That less well-defined entry lists it as an AbLS object (Absorption Line System) with a redshift that puts it only 7.2 billion light-years (z=0.868000) instead of 11.5 light-years (z=2.983090) of the quasar labeled entry. It might be that the closer distance is the redshift of the absorption lines while the further is that of the quasar itself. In other words, a gas cloud sits between us and the quasar causing the absorption lines in the more distant quasar. At least that is how I am interpreting this double entry. If anyone has a better idea let me know.

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

Related Designations for NGC5424