NGC5548

NGC 5548 is one of the first Seyfert galaxies discovered so is very well studied for that. It is found in Bootes. It was the large plumes that drew my attention and I found nothing much on them much to my dismay. I assume that they are the result of a merger with some other system and that in turn has triggered its active and highly variable Seyfert nucleus. Still I found nothing directly saying why there are these plumes. There are several dwarf galaxies in the area indicating it has companions and could have chowed down one or more in the past. Redshift puts it about 240 million light-years distant. A single non-redshift measurement puts it a bit further at 300 million light-years. Using the 240 million light-year distance I measure its size without the plumes at 100,000 light-years. About the size of our galaxy. Including the plumes, it grows to over twice that size at 225,000 light-years. It was discovered by William Herschel on May 19, 1784 and is in the second Herschel 400 observing program. Most visual descriptions describe the core as being stellar in appearance which fits its Seyfert classification. However, my stretch of the core failed to show this unless I applied a linear stretch that left most of the galaxy entirely invisible. Any attempt to bring up the galaxy expanded the core beyond looking stellar.

I moved the galaxy toward the top of the frame in order to pick up the pair of interacting galaxies LEDA 140292 and LEDA 140293. The former has been drawn out with a huge curved plume ending in a brighter section that reminds me of a scorpion with the bright section its stinger. I assume they are interacting. I found nothing useful on them in this regard. LEDA 140293 had no redshift so it is even possible they are two totally unrelated galaxies in the same line of sight. I suppose the "stinger" could be the remains of a galaxy that was destroyed by LEDA 140292 and 140293 isn't involved but I find this of a low probability. I prefer to think of the two LEDA galaxies as interacting until I learn differently. Without the plume either LEDA galaxy is about 30,000 to 35,000 light-years across. Including the plume, LEDA 140292 is almost 110,000 light-years across. I wish we could convince the HST to take a look at it. The Sloan image (attached) shows the blue object below LEDA 140293 appears to be a second plume hiding behind LEDA 140293 indicating it is likely in front of its western plumed companion.

The field contains quite a few galaxy clusters. The one to the upper left looks a lot like a swarm of red bees around a huge queen bee. While other clusters are at about the same 3.5 million light-year distance their members aren't nearly as red nor as bright.

Due to the faintness of the plumes, I tried using 1 20 minute frame for each color rather than 2 10 minute ones to better hide read noise. I don't think it helped and the red frame had a satellite I had to clone out. For so little gain it wasn't worth it. I suppose two 20 minute color frames might have made a little difference but probably not worth it either. An experiment for the future.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=1x20', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC5548

NGC5576

NGC 5576 anchors a small group of galaxies in northeastern Virgo about 80 million light-years distant by redshift. It is the largest and strangest of the three in my image. Classified as an E3 elliptical galaxy I didn't expect it to be as interesting as it turned out to be. The night I took this image was suddenly hit by northern lights which reduced my ability to go faint. I didn't realize this until two months later when I went to process the image and found the background as bright as if a near full moon was out. Red was hit the worst but all frames suffered. I'd not mention this but NGC 5576 isn't a normal E3 galaxy. It has plumes that greatly distort the expected normal slightly elliptical shape. The main one I picked up is to the east and a bit north. At first, I thought it a donut that vanished from my optical window but after enhancing both POSS and Sloan images the donut-like loop is real. There's another I mostly lost to aurora to the northwest and one that connects it to NGC 5574 to the southwest. That too is mostly lost on aurora fog. I found little on these plumes. The latest note at NED even says "NGC 5576 has a prototypical E4 morphology of average compactness." But another note from the same year says "NGC 5576: This boxy E displays a peculiar envelope with marked twist and important asymmetries. This envelope is also well above the r^1/4^ law." You'd think they were looking at two different galaxies.

NGC 5574 to the southwest seems in a plume and may be the cause of all the plumes about NGC 5576. If they are at the same distance as their redshift indicates their projected separation is only 64,000 light-years. I measure NGC 5576 at 92,000 light-years and NGC 5574 at 38,000 light-years. That puts them closer than the diameter of the larger galaxy. I suspect their distances aren't equal so their real separation is greater but the plumes argue that they were close at one time.

NGC 5577 is a nice spiral but we see it rather edge-on limiting the detail we can see. Still, it is a pretty galaxy. I measure its size at about 78,000 light-years. I see no hint it has interacted with the other two even though all three have similar redshift values.

NGC 5577 was discovered by George Stoney on April 26, 1849. The other two were first seen by William Herschel on April 30, 1786, 63 years earlier. NGC 5576 is in the original Herschel 400 program. My notes from that on May 17, 1985 with my 10" F/5 on a fair night due to high humidity at 120x reads "Medium sized, nearly round galaxy with a bright core. 13th magnitude star on the northwest edge of its halo. Nearly overlaps NGC 5574." I don't know how to interpret that. Was I seeing the full extent of the plumes in all directions? That's about the only way I'd say the halo nearly overlaps NGC 5574? I suspect I just meant I saw the galaxy without the distorting plumes and was just taken by how close they were together. Still, I need to take another look with that scope. It is set up in my observatory though rarely used.

Many galaxies I'd normally have included in the annotated image were lost to the aurora. Only about half were visible in the FITS stack and even fewer made it to the final image. I've put it back on the to-do list for another try but with so many on the list never taken I don't know when that will happen.

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

Related Designations for NGC5576

NGC5584

NGC 5584 is a rather low surface brightness galaxy in western Virgo 80 to 90 million light-years distant that is just about on the celestial equator. It is another spiral that at first appears rather normal then on second look is rather strange. The northern third is mostly a flocculent spiral in that the arm structure is just a bunch of bright knots in no real pattern. The lower two-thirds has spiral arms but they are strange. The northern arm coming from the core is indistinct and rapidly widens into just a bright region that has little structure. The southern arm is normal looking but then curves north becoming the disorganized jumble that is the northern part of the galaxy. A second southern arm stars from between the two arms and other arms begin and end apparently at random locations. One object I took to be a star knot near the southernmost end of the galaxy is listed in NED as a separate galaxy but with a redshift very similar to NGC 5584. I can't see it as anything but a star knot in the galaxy but it is shown on the annotated image. It was discovered by William Temple but the date is lost to history. It was also seen by Edward Barnard on July 27, 1881.

Conditions were very poor for transparency the night this was taken. The image doesn't begin to go as deep as normal. Still, it shows some rather distant and obviously very big and bright galaxies and quasars. One object puzzles me. It is listed at NED as a Rejected Quasar Candidate (RQC on the annotated image). It is southeast of NGC 5584. It shows a photographic redshift of 2.885 which would put it's look back time at over 11 billion years. Seeing something at that distance would seem to require something as bright as a quasar yet it is not one. I can only think the photographic redshift is quite wrong for some reason. Note it is the faint starlike object just west (right) of a much brighter star. The two are only a couple seconds of arc apart so it is difficult to see them as separate objects. Southeast of it is GAMA 744799 which NED lists both as a Seyfert 1 galaxy and a quasar at 4 billion light-years. I didn't think a galaxy could be both at once so not sure what the significance of this is. NELG refers to a narrow emission line galaxy and ELG just an emission line galaxy (normal line width)

One asteroid is in the image. Note how the trail fades as it moves to the northwest. Even at its brightest, it is much fainter than an 18th magnitude asteroid normally appears in my images. This shows how conditions started poor then went downhill during the image capture. My usual routine is to catch objects when near the meridian. This gives me time to catch 1 red, green and blue frame along with two luminance frames then flip to the other side of the meridian and take the same 5 frames in reverse order. But after the two luminance frames on the west side, I stopped and took the remaining three color frames another night. I should have redone the luminance but that night wasn't a lot better than the first one so didn't bother.

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

Related Designations for NGC5584

NGC5585

NGC 5585 is one of four dwarf satellite galaxies of M101. Therefore it is about the same distance as M101 which is usually state to be 25 to 27 million light-years away though the redshift for NGC 5585 is about 18 million light-years. NGC 5585 is the largest of the 4 by quite a margin. Also, it is the furthest from M101 at 3.33 degrees. At 25 million light-years it would be 36 thousand light-years across which is about the same size as the large Magellanic cloud. One note, from 1985. at NED says: "Knotty HII regions are distributed over the disk where the arm structure is not clear." Yet another older reference, 1964, says: "Bright middle. No definite nucleus. Weak irregular arms well resolved up to the central region. Low surface brightness." Could these very different descriptions be due to the difference between film and early CCD imaging? NGC 5585 is classed by NED as SAB(s)d with HII. The regions are said to be 2" in size or smaller. That is below my resolution this night. This would be interesting to revisit with an H alpha filter to bring out these many regions. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 17, 1789. It is in the second H400 program.

Many of the background galaxies in this image are about 1.4 to 1.6 billion light-years away. While scattered across the image I found three different galaxy clusters all in the same part of the image that are 1.5 billion light-years away. None of the three had a diameter listed. Do they overlap? What about those at that distance on the other side of the image? I searched a 1-degree radius but found no one cluster to explain this wide group at about the same distance.

As is often the case I did find an obvious galaxy not listed in NED. It is Northwest of NGC 5585 and is marked by a question mark. The vast majority of galaxies in the image have no redshift listed at NED so aren't labeled.

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

Related Designations for NGC5585

NGC5591

NGC 5591 is a double galaxy in Bootes about 540 million light-years away. The galaxies appear to be making their first encounter. Whether their velocities are such they will merge I've not found. Come back in a 100 million years and we should have a good answer to this. The western component is listed at NED as Sdm pec with a starburst nucleus. In this case, the starburst activity appears related to their interaction. The eastern component is classed as simply Sc. The NGC project takes the approach that this is one strongly disrupted galaxy classed as Sc pec. To me, it is quite obvious these are two galaxies rather than one disrupted one. I doubt they looked anything like what we see today before the encounter began. It was found by Lewis Swift on June 4, 1886.

The other major galaxy in the image is the ordinary NGC 5587 at the top of the image. It is classed as S0/a by both NED and the NGC project. With the faint but obvious dust lanes, I have trouble with the S0 classification. It seems a rather old spiral in which star formation is dying down though the outer parts still show blue stars. It is much closer than NGC 5591 and not at all related to it. Redshift puts it at about 110 million light-years. It was found by William Herschel on April 17, 1784. It's not in either H400 program.

The field has little else of interest. The field galaxies are mostly all more than 1 billion light-years distant with some much more distant. The few quasars are also unusually distant.

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

Related Designations for NGC5591

NGC5600

NGC 5600 is a peculiar face on spiral galaxy in southern Bootes. Its distance by redshift is about 120 million light-years. However, there's no agreement on its distance by various Tully-Fisher measurements. They range from 110 to 350 million light-years with an average of about 230 million. Why this severe disagreement I was unable to discover. Assuming the redshift distance it is a bit less than 50,000 light-years across. Its structure is very weird. The CGCG says: "Blue, post-eruptive Sc with one pronounced spiral arm and several blue knots." I think I see two arms that sort of merge with one much fainter giving the one arm illusion. The bright blue knot directly west of the core in line with my label in the annotated image is listed by NED as a separate galaxy. But they give it virtually the same redshift as the galaxy making it just a star cloud though I suppose some could argue it is the core of something it is eating and that may account for its odd structure. Its strong blue color argues against this, however. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 17, 1784, and is in the second Herschel 400 observing program.

To the east of NGC 5600 is a faint, somewhat curved blue object. I find no distance data for it and in fact but for catalog entries (GALEX for RV and AGC for radio) I find nothing on it. The curve is partly real and partly an illusion. The latter is due to a star to the southwest on the edge of the object that makes the southern part appear to curve more than it really does. I assume it is a blue irregular galaxy of some sort. The problem comes when I tried to pin down its position. SIMBAD identifies it both under its Sloan positional ID and the radio AGC one giving the same position, 14h 24m 14.881s +14d 39m 11.73s. NED, however, separates the optical and radio positions giving 14h 24m 14.9s +14d 39 17s for the optical GALEX position and 14h 24m 14.8s +14d 38m 58s for the AGC 248933 position. That puts the radio southwest of the visual object by about 24 seconds of arc. However, the error bar for the radio position is 45" So SIMBAD says the two are the same while NED says they may be the same or different. I went with SIMBAD on the annotated image. I'd love to know exactly what this object is and why it is a good radio source if it is the radio source.

My notes indicate I had taken this one several years ago. However, I can't find the files any place. So I ended up retaking it before it got too far west this year. To do that meant taking it with a half-moon nearby. Something I try to avoid. That also put it further west than my Tpoint map so I had to guide this one. Something I rarely do but it worked out well anyway. It got so low for the color data two of the three color frames were out of alignment with the luminance and red frames. This forced me to break out RegiStar to whip them back into alignment which changed by several pixels across the face of the image. More than I can ever recall happening before but it was a very humid night. Could that cause more dispersion than normal low in the west? Thanks to the moon the image doesn't go as deep as normal and color data is noisy and weak for fainter objects. I had to invent a new technique to pull color into these regions. It worked so well I will add it into my normal process flow as it added little time and really works well for faint objects that really need more time than I usually give color data.

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

Related Designations for NGC5600

NGC5614

This is a reshoot with twice the exposure time under a bit better seeing. It didn't pick up much more of the plumes than the first but detail in the galaxy is far better. Some of the text below is from the initial post but there is something new in this image so keep reading as it is near the end. It is not in the original nor is it an asteroid or another solar system object.

Arp 178 consists of three galaxies NGC 5613 (upper), NGC 5614 (lower) and NGC 5615 (inside NW halo of NGC 5614). These are located in the constellation of Bootes. NGC 5613 is nearly 400 million light-years distant while the other two are a bit less than 190 million light-years away. Arp put these in his category of galaxies with narrow counter tails. His comment reads: "Ring off center, broad ejected plume from condensation in ring."

Most papers of the era of Arp's Atlas and prior consider NGC 5614 as interacting with the northern galaxy (5613). We now know that with 5613 having over twice the redshift this isn't the case. It is unrelated but worthy of its own entry in the atlas. It is classed as (R)SAB(r)0+ by NED and the NGC project agrees but leaves off the + sign. At first glance, it appears to have a faint outer ring. But look closely and you see it is really two very extended spiral arms that nearly overlap. One starts at the 11 o'clock position and goes around to the 4 o'clock position. The other starts at 5 o'clock and goes around to the 10 o'clock position. In both cases, the ends are further from the core than the other arm inside it. This may be easier to see in the Sloan image stretched a bit differently than my image. What caused this? There seems no likely source. Prior to its redshift being determined, it is easy to conclude that NGC 5614 caused it. Now it is a puzzle.

The main feature here is NGC 5614 a very large tightly wound spiral with an off-center core and huge plume. NED and the NGC Project classes it as SA(r)ab pec. The plume seems possibly related to NGC 5615. It certainly is due to a gravitational interaction in the recent past. The off-center core causes Arp's "ring off center" comment. At first, I thought it might be that this was a case of a merger with inner arms rotating counterclockwise and outer ones turning clockwise but I found a rotation curve that says all are rotating the same way. It is just the core being off center from the first ring that creates this illusion. I am having a hard time seeing it. Still, I believe it a merger in progress with NGC 5615.

The condensation Arp refers to is NGC 5615 and has a redshift that puts it about 3 million light years more distant than NGC 5614. NGC 5615 is not classified at NED, NGC project says S? I can't see enough to try classifying it so have to agree with NED. Is NGC 5614 in the process of digesting NGC 5615. I saw suggestions of this in early papers but nothing conclusive. One paper suggests that the tightly wound arms of NGC 5614 might be due to an unusually massive black hole at its core. No reason was given other than it appears such galaxies tend to have larger than expected black holes when this has been measured. Pretty speculative to me. In any case, it is an interesting galaxy as is NGC 5613.

After I wrote this Adam Block posted an image of this galaxy taken by the 32" scope at the Mt. Lemmon Sky Center observatories. It clearly shows NGC 5615 is broken into several bright cores. It also shows the bright blue arcs in NGC 5614 far more clearly. I now think 5614 is quite likely the remains of a galaxy torn asunder by 5615, even the core of it is being ripped apart by tidal forces. I wrote Adam with this suggestion and he agreed it is likely the case. The three million light-year difference in redshift is likely due to relative motion and difficulty of assigning a redshift based distance to a mess like this.

Another galaxy at about the same distance of NGC 5514-5 is to their NE. Several galaxies of the same distance as NGC 5513 are in the frame. It appears they are two different groups. Several galaxies at 1 billion light-years are also found around the image. While several more are at 2.1 to 2.2 million light years and may make a third group.

Normally I think of NGC galaxies as being closer than say a half billion light-years, far closer in many cases. But NGC 5609 at 1.31 billion light-years is an exception. NED lists its green magnitude as 16.3 while the NGC Project puts its visual magnitude at 15.7. Since green is usually used for this I can't explain the difference. Still, this one should be visible in larger amateur telescopes from a dark site, say a 16" or larger. Young eyes may glimpse it with less aperture if the brighter magnitude is correct.

The smudge of a galaxy north-northeast of Arp 178 is SDSS J142418.67+245549.8. NED says it is only about 6" of arc across though it is about 24" across in my image. NED also gives it a far too faint magnitude. It has no redshift data. Except that its position exactly matches that of NED I'd think they were talking about a different galaxy.

Southeast of Arp 178, below a galaxy at 2.2 billion light-years is an object marked by a question mark. NED lists it at 22nd magnitude. Indeed it is 22nd magnitude (barely visible) on my first image of this field but it is 19.5 magnitude on this image or 10 times brighter than that in my first image. There is a galaxy at that position. That got me wondering if a supernova had been seen at that position. Yep, it is PTF11dwn. PTF stands for Palomar Transient Factory. 11 is the year (apparently they don't worry about 2100 and beyond). The supernova is a type 1A at magnitude 19.5. It is in SDSS J142422.29+344833.8. It was discovered on May 23rd. My independent discovery image was taken on June 5th, 13 days later. I wonder how many others like this are lurking on my images I'll never know about since I have no comparison image. Only because it was near a galaxy I was annotating did I notice it. When comparing the NED image of the field that extra star in my image confused me for a bit. Otherwise, I'd never have noticed it.

Arp's image
http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp178.jpeg

Adam Block's image with the 32" telescope at the Mt. Lemmon Sky Center
http://www.caelumobservatory.com/gallery/n5613.shtml

Sloan image:
http://www.spacebanter.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3518&d=1304625417

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

Related Designations for NGC5614

NGC5619

The WBL507 group of 4 galaxies is located in northwestern Virgo almost 400 million light-years from us. Three of the members are obvious; NGC 5919, NGC 5919B and NGC 5919C (NGC 5919 is also known as NGC 5919A). I just don't know which of many other galaxies at this distance in the image is the fourth. Other catalogs say the group has 8 members (USGC U625), 10 members (Mr19:[BFW2006] 04483) and 14 for Mr18:[BFW2006] 02293. Seems to be a define your own group field. While well removed from the first three I'll just say CGCG 047-055 makes a good choice for the 4th member. At least these 4 show signs of possible interaction. NGC 5619 has an odd inner red arm and a very oval ring of blue arms coming off the bar. Otherwise, it is rather low in surface brightness for such a large galaxy. NGC 5619B and C are narrow line active galactic nuclei galaxies. While not a certain sign of interact this is often the case with such galaxies. NGC 5619C also meets Seyfert 2 spectral specs also another indication of possible prior interaction. I can't find much on CGCG 047-055 though it is obviously highly distorted with much of the southern half of the galaxy appearing missing. NGC 5619 is a huge spiral. If the redshift distance is right it is nearly 250,000 light-years across, nearly twice the size of the Milky Way and our galaxy is an unusually big spiral at half that size. NGC 5919B and C are our size at about 115,000 light-years across. They look rather dinky compared to NGC 5619. CGCG 047-055 is "only" about 75,000 light-years across though that is about average for a spiral. NGC 5619 was found by John Herschel on April 10, 1828

The field is one that has been studied to find faint emission line galaxies. Most are around 22nd magnitude so very faint. You may need to enlarge the image to see some of the fainter ones. I have to question the redshift values of a couple in the image. One south of NGC 5619 and southwest of the very red M8 star has a redshift that puts it only 28 million light-years away. Yet its size is hardly larger than a very large globular cluster. Toward the left edge of the image near the bottom and just below a bright white star is one with a redshift that puts it 8.56 billion light-years distant. That means it is as bright as many quasars yet doesn't appear to be classed as one and certainly its spectrum has been studied to allow them to determine it is an ELG. Or did someone screw up the redshift measurements of these two?

There's one asteroid in the upper left quadrant of the image. Several other galaxies about the same redshift as NGC 5619 are seen in the image. Many more are just outside the bounds of my image.

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

Related Designations for NGC5619

NGC5638

These two NGC galaxies are located in northeastern Virgo about 90 million light-years away. At one time there was some disagreement as to whether these two were interacting. Now it has been pretty well decided they aren't interacting. I certainly see no indication of it. Both were discovered by William Herschel on April 30, 1786. Only NGC 5638 is in the second Herschel 400 observing program. NGC 5636 appears too faint for the program. Unfortunately, my notes from that got lost in the move to Minnesota. I can't recall if I saw NGC 5636 or not. NGC 5636 is a barred spiral while NGC 5638 a classic elliptical. Both are rather red and dead. I see some hint of new stars in NGC 5636 but not many. Something seems to have killed most star formation in this galaxy.

The field has three other rather major galaxies, UGC 09310 to the east is very blue and about the same distance as the two NGC galaxies. So why does it still have star formation while the other two have little star formation? I found no indication it has interacted with either of the NGC galaxies but it sure is distorted as if something nailed it in the recent past.

The other two galaxies are UGC 09277 and UGC 09285. The former shows little sign of current star formation. The latter has some blue stars indicating star formation, while weak today was common a billion years ago or so. UGC 09277 is half the distance of the other galaxies while UGC 09285 seems to be part of the same group as the other larger galaxies.

While I call these "major" galaxies that is only because they stand out in the image. None are really large, even the elliptical. Assuming they are at about 90 million light-years I measure them at:

NGC 5638 67,000 light-years
NGC 5636 37,000 light-years
UGC 9310 52,000 light-years
UGC 9285 36,000 light-years
UGC 9277 19,000 light-years using a distance of 40 million light-years.

The field has several other odd galaxies. Southeast of UGC 09277 is the blue smudge of SHOC 466. That catalog is the SDSS HII galaxies with Oxygen abundances Catalog. Then there's the ELG (Emission Line Galaxy) north of UGC 9310. NED puts it at a distance of over 6 billion light-years yet on a rather poor night for transparency I picked it up. That I can do that on a rather poor night seems impossible. I wonder if it isn't a veiled quasar or another such galaxy such as a BL Lac object.

To the southeast of the ELG is ASK 100527.0. It is a very large spiral at 145,000 light-years in size. It also has a surprisingly bright core region. That is red but the two arms are blue. Another large and even more distant galaxy is in the northeastern corner of the image. NED shows it at 4.33 billion light-years. Since that was determined photographically with filters rather than spectroscopically the distance is somewhat questionable. If right it too is very large at 150,000 light-years in size. The entire galaxy appears to be blue. It must really be very blue to survive reddening at that distance.

One asteroid put in an appearance. See the annotated image for details.

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

Related Designations for NGC5638

NGC5668

NGC 5668 is a nice nearly face on spiral galaxy in Virgo. It is well studied by the pros with over one hundred recent papers including it. Yet I was shocked to find not one amateur image of it on any forum I checked and only a half dozen or so amateur images on websites I looked at or Google turned up.

It is classified as an SA(s)d galaxy a bit over 80 million light-years distant. Several papers say it has a young short (about 12 arc second bar) though that isn't in any classification for it that I saw. It appears to have a lot of current star formation going on throughout the galaxy though much of its disk is surprisingly fain but for its arms.

NGC 5668 was discovered by William Herschel on April 17, 1789. It is in the second Herschel 400 observing program so shouldn't be totally lost to at least visual amateur astronomers.

NED lists a blue object to the east-northeast of its core as a separate galaxy. I've noted it in the annotated image. I have trouble with this as it looks like a star cloud in the galaxy in my image and the Sloan image I checked. Redshift puts it at a similar distance though I suppose it could be the remains of its last galactic meal.

NED listed several hundred objects, mostly galaxies and quasar or quasar candidates in the image. I couldn't begin to annotate them all without the image being a mass of labels. So I mostly limited my annotation to brighter objects but for a few very distant objects NED said were galaxies but are so distant I have to wonder how I picked them up as this wasn't a great night for transparency. For example, there's an Emission Line Galaxy (ELG) just southeast of NGC 5668 that NED puts at 8.38 billion light-years. I can't imagine even with great transparency I could pick up any galaxy in 40 minutes of luminance data at that distance. I've added (Q?) to its label as I have to wonder if it is not a quasar or a veiled quasar (one in which the galaxy's dust mostly hides the quasar at its core) rather than just a galaxy with emission lines.

I found a surprising number of quasars and quasar candidates in the image. While I annotated only a few of the fainter galaxies and emission-line galaxies I did include all NED indicated are or likely are quasars.

One asteroid put in an appearance. Two others were just out of the frame at the bottom.

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

Related Designations for NGC5668