NGC5759

NGC 5759 is a pair of interacting galaxies about 400 million light-years distant in southeastern Bootes. It consists of two galaxies, one stripped of its stars but for the core, the other reduced to a highly distorted spiral. A bridge of stars connects the two. The pair was discovered by Édouard Stephan on June 7, 1880. NED classifies the southern galaxy as S pec. While the NGC Project and Seligman say it is a type I irregular. These are irregular galaxies with some structure but not enough to call a spiral or elliptical. To me, the spiral nature is rather evident. Only Seligman classifies the northern galaxy saying S0/a. A note at NED puzzles me as it reads: "According to [UGC] a pair of galaxies joined by a bridge. The southern one is very compact." To me, it is the northern one I'd call a compact galaxy being mostly a core with a spray of stars. I measure the pair as being about 200,000 light-years across though that assumes both are at the same distance. They likely are at somewhat different distances with it possible there's no actual bridge between them, just two overlapping star streams as seen from our perspective. The lower galaxy has several plumes indicating the interaction may be ongoing with some of the plumes due to other passes of the companion. I wish transparency had been better to see what faint detail I lost to my very hazy skies. I used 70 minutes of luminance, all I could fit in before dawn but still, the image doesn't go very deep.

Below the pair is CGCG 076-042. It is at about the same distance so part of the same galaxy group. It has a faint outer ring around it that I just barely detected. That makes me wonder if it too may have interacted with NGC 5759. I measure it at 120,000 light-years across including the faint outer ring so it too is a large galaxy.

There are many dwarf galaxies also at about 400 million light-years scattered across the image as shown in the annotated version. NED lists a galaxy group, USGC U657 centered a bit east and midway between NGC 5759 and CGCG 076-042 with 11 members but frustratingly gives no angular size. I assume it includes at least my field.

The field contains many galaxy clusters according to NED. The big one being Abell 1970. The label "ABELL" is at its center position. It seems to include most, if not all the other groups. It has a metamorphic classification of GM III which means it is little concentrated with no obvious anchoring galaxy or galaxies.

There were no asteroids in the image but there are several quasars, some rather bright. One is listed as DLyA which stands for Damped Lyman-Alpha. Such quasars are in galaxies with a lot of molecular hydrogen indicating the galaxy is likely in an early stage of formation. They usually reside in galaxies with a redshift of 2 to 4. 2.41 in the case of the one in my image. It's to the northwest of NGC 5759.

This was my last May image. While taken on May 9 the rest of the month was a washout. June was far worse with only a few images taken. My backlog is shrinking rapidly!

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=7x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC5759

NGC5774

NGC 5774 and NGC 5775 are a pair of interacting galaxies in Virgo. Papers from 50 years ago considered them non-interacting, an opinion that has changed over the years. NGC 5774 is the blue spiral. It is classed as SAB(rs)d by NED and SBcd by the NGC Project. Redshift puts it 81 million light-years away while Tully-Fisher measurements say 87 million light-years. NGC 5775 is the near edge-on disk galaxy. It is classed as SBc? one place at NED and Sb(f) another. The (f) classification just means it is seen edge-on (not that it is flat as some web pages claim. The NGC Project classes it as SBc without the question mark. Redshift measurements put it about 87 million light-years away. Tully-Fisher measurement agrees. In any case, it and NGC 5774 must be at the same distance to show the interaction seen. I used redshift data for consistency in the annotated image but also show the Tully-Fisher estimate as well. I've not done that before on an annotated image. (Edit: I now do that on all annotated images when available at NED.)

NGC 5774 was discovered by Bindon Stoney on April 26, 1851. William Herschel found NGC 5775 on May 27, 1786. It is in the second H400 program. My data for that got lost in the move to Minnesota. That was my visual notes for it.

A Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 5775 has been recently released, see link below. Only a week before, by coincidence, I'd imaged this pair. I'm more than a year behind in processing my images but moved this one to the top of the processing list. I don't see in their image all they talk about. The HST image is rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise from my image. Notice along its bottom edge near the right corner some faint stars are resolved. From my image, these appear to be stars in NGC 5774's drawn out arm that extends over or behind NGC 5775. Unfortunately, the HST image doesn't extend far enough to see the arm on the other side of the edge on galaxy. The Hubble image was taken through narrow band filters that distort the color of the galaxy showing extensive HII regions of star formation an odd orange color instead of the more common red-pink color. Hubble has also imaged part of NGC 5774 but only in one band of near IR light. It can be found at the Hubble Legacy site for those of you that are interested. Being only one 640 second frame it is pretty noisy.

The annotated image has many UvES (Ultraviolet Excess Sources) in it. These are likely quasars. Distances to them are determined photographically from the 7 photometric channels of the SDSS survey. This method is approximate but not as exact as spectroscopic measurements. Some are very faint and may be difficult to see. You may need to enlarge the image to find the fainter ones.

HST image of NGC 5775
http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/screen/potw1119a.jpg
Text:
http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1119a/

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=9x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC5774

NGC5777

NGC 5777 and UGC 09570 are a pair of galaxies in Draco about 100 million light-years away. NED classes NGC 5777 as Sbc and as having a narrow line AGN at its core. The NGC project says simply it is an Sb spiral. In any case, it is seen nearly edge-on making such details hard to see. One paper says that it has a plume. My annotated image points to the "plume" though I see only a slight "bump" to the edge of the galaxy at that point. The paper's image has had the stars removed making it hard to determine where it is looking. My brain can't comprehend mirrored images very well either and theirs is a mirror image of a standard presentation. http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1994ApJ...427..160P&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf

It was discovered by William Herschel on April 17, 1789. It's not in either of the H400 programs.

The companion, UGC 09570 is listed as a dwarf spiral at NED with about the same redshift indicating it is likely a true companion. Its spiral structure is very fuzzy.

The field contains 12 quasars (Q) or quasar candidates (UvES). I wonder what Arp would have made of that since NGC 5777 doesn't look all that disturbed. The disk does appear very slightly warped but that's it. Arp thought quasars clustered about disturbed galaxies and were thus emitted by them rather than being distant black holes in early galaxies. This was just a selection effect, quasars were first found in well-studied fields such as those containing disturbed galaxies. Turns out they are just as common around more ordinary galaxies as this field shows. Few take his ideas seriously any more but last I heard he was still clinging to them.

I found a couple galaxy clusters in the image. WHL J145204.3+590518 with 8 members is to the upper left of NGC 5777. It had a redshift for only the cluster whose position was close (within a couple seconds of arc) of the bright cluster galaxy at its core though there was no redshift for the galaxy, it was listed as being the BCG of the group. The line in the annotated image points to the galaxy. In the lower right is GMBCG J222.41286+58.86499 with 9 members. Here NED lists the same photographic z value and position for the cluster and BCG. As mentioned in previous posts the photographic redshift value is usually less accurate than a spectroscopic redshift but the two, when present, are relatively similar so it is usually reliable to give a general idea of relative distance.

As usual, I stumbled across a couple low surface brightness blue galaxies not listed at NED at all. Some systematic error is omitting them it would appear. Again, these are just two I happened to check, the vast majority weren't looked at so others have likely been overlooked.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount MENGC 5777 and UGC 09570 are a pair of galaxies in Draco about 100 million light-years away. NED classes NGC 5777 as Sbc and as having a narrow line AGN at its core. The NGC project says simply it is an Sb spiral. In any case, it is seen nearly edge-on making such details hard to see. One paper says that it has a plume. My annotated image points to the "plume" though I see only a slight "bump" to the edge of the galaxy at that point. The paper's image has had the stars removed making it hard to determine where it is looking. My brain can't comprehend mirrored images very well either and theirs is a mirror image of a standard presentation. http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1994ApJ...427..160P&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf

The companion, UGC 09570 is listed as a dwarf spiral at NED with about the same redshift indicating it is likely a true companion. Its spiral structure is very fuzzy.

The field contains 12 quasars (Q) or quasar candidates (UvES). I wonder what Arp would have made of that since NGC 5777 doesn't look all that disturbed. The disk does appear very slightly warped but that's it. Arp thought quasars clustered about disturbed galaxies and were thus emitted by them rather than being distant black holes in early galaxies. This was just a selection effect, quasars were first found in well-studied fields such as those containing disturbed galaxies. Turns out they are just as common around more ordinary galaxies as this field shows. Few take his ideas seriously any more but last I heard he was still clinging to them. (Edit: Since this was written he has died. I hope taking his odd idea with him. He was a top astronomer prior to getting this idea stuck in his brain.)

I found a couple galaxy clusters in the image. WHL J145204.3+590518 with 8 members is to the upper left of NGC 5777. It had a redshift for only the cluster whose position was close (within a couple seconds of arc) of the bright cluster galaxy at its core though there was no redshift for the galaxy, it was listed as being the BCG of the group. The line in the annotated image points to the galaxy. In the lower right is GMBCG J222.41286+58.86499 with 9 members. Here NED lists the same photographic z value and position for the cluster and BCG. As mentioned in previous posts the photographic redshift value is usually less accurate than a spectroscopic redshift but the two, when present, are relatively similar so it is usually reliable to give a general idea of relative distance.

As usual, I stumbled across a couple low surface brightness blue galaxies not listed at NED at all. Some systematic error is omitting them it would appear. Again, these are just two I happened to check, the vast majority weren't looked at so others have likely been overlooked. (Edit: Since this was written I've found NED often has this as an Ultraviolet source but not as a galaxy. It returns hundreds of such sources, nearly all blue stars and sorting out the few galaxies is apparently beyond their computer's ability. I certainly don't have the time to try and sort through them all. Once in a rare while, NED does show one as a galaxy and I'll note that. None were in this image.)

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

Related Designations for NGC5777

NGC5792

NGC 5792 is a rather large, in angular size barred spiral galaxy in northern Libra about 100 million light-years from us. I measure it as about 500 arc seconds across its wide arms. That would make it a huge spiral at 240,000 light-years across. To my eye, the far eastern arm is oddly diffuse and appears warped upward as my image is oriented. I found nothing in the notes at NED indicating any warp. In fact, the notes seem oddly at odds with each other. One says: "NGC 5792 is a highly inclined, well-formed barred spiral with an evident almost-complete inner ring from which the grand design two-armed spiral pattern emerges." While another read: "5792 Highly peculiar spiral with overextended spiral arms..." So is it regular or peculiar? I vote for the latter.

One clue to what's going on may be an object NED lists as a separate galaxy embedded in the outer ring that the spiral arms form. NED lists it as a LINER galaxy at almost the same redshift as NGC 5792. Could this outer ring be stars that have been ripped off of this galaxy leaving only a very active blue core behind? Or is it just a star cloud in the galaxy. The LINER label would be one I'd not expect for a star cloud. (Edit: New ideas say LINER is due not to the core but white dwarfs. I can't see a star cluster having enough of them but the idea isn't as odd as it was when I first wrote this.) Yet I found nothing to indicate this might be the remains of a galaxy it is eating. Seems to explain the apparent warp as well as the diffuse nature of the ring like arms as well as it's huge size which is very unusual for a spiral that isn't interacting with another galaxy. Ignoring this outer ring the galaxy is only 200" across or 95,000 light-years. A rather reasonable size for a spiral galaxy. But since nothing is being said about this I have to wonder what is the problem with this interpretation. Though there is a new paper out about fading AGN's that apparently includes this galaxy and may cover this. Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall so I can't see it. The paper indicates the galaxy has been taken by the HST but there's no publicly available HST data at the HST site so it is likely still within the embargo period. http://cdsbib.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/cdsbib?2015AJ....149..155K

The galaxy was discovered by William Herschel on April 11, 1787. I was rather surprised to find that it didn't make either of the 2 Herschel 400 observing programs. Probably explains why I have apparently not logged it visually. The "bright" 9.6 magnitude star that gave me processing fits might make it a difficult visual object.

NED listed a couple hundred very faint galaxies with redshift data in this frame. Unfortunately, transparency was poor this night and my limiting magnitude is only 21.4 or so rather than the 22.7 to 23.5 I can go on a typical night (well typical before this horrid weather set in over 2 years ago now). This made most of them too faint and would have made a mess of my annotated image while avoiding overlapping labels. I did pick up a few in the area of NGC 5792 but they are so hard to see on the lossy JPG I stopped trying to show them which also saved me a lot of time as trying to fit so many labels in and still be able to read them would have been very time consuming and accomplishing little.

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

Related Designations for NGC5792

NGC5813

NGC 5813 is a huge elliptical galaxy in eastern Virgo about 99 million light-years distant by redshift and 97 by the d-sigma method. http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Willick/frames.html I measure its size as about 177,000 light-years at the 99 million light-year distance. Since the edges just fade away this is likely smaller than its real size. While I see what look like they could be globular star clusters in the outskirts of the galaxy NED doesn't list any. I can't believe a giant elliptical like this one wouldn't have a lot of them. It seems to have some companions but their distances appear far too close to us for these to be true companions. They are apparently only line of sight galaxies. NED does list some true companions but they are all well out of my field of view. It was discovered by William Herschel on February 24, 1786. It is in the second H400 program.

NGC 5811 is listed at NED and in several catalogs as being a pair of galaxies. I can't see this in my image but the Sloan Survey image seems to indicate several pieces that may be separate galaxies. If so they have similar redshifts so are possibly in the act of merging. It was discovered by Albert Marth on April 12, 1864.

NGC 5814 appears to be a rather messed up spiral galaxy with a plume to the northeast and a short bright blue arm coming for the southern end of the central region with nothing similar off the north end. It was discovered by John Herschel on April 13,l 1828.

The other major galaxy in the image is UGC 09661. It is closer than NGC 5813 yet far smaller in angular size. It appears rather similar to NGC 5811 but more disturbed. It, however, is listed as a single galaxy.

The field contains many Emission Line Galaxies (ELG), most of which lie at great distances with most over 5 billion light-years distant so often very faint. Ultraviolet Excess Sources (UvES) are also found mostly at even greater distances. These are all quasar candidates whose distance is were determined by a less accurate photographic redshift determination (p). A few proven quasars are scattered about the image.

If an object had a designation that was only its sky coordinates and the survey that recorded it, I only noted its type as the designation with full coordinates were just too long and made an already congested image that much worse. I have noted all that had classifications, even when no distance was known (na). All with a redshift distance or classification have been included making for a rather dense annotated image.

NGC 5813 was intentionally moved to the lower right in order to better include UGC 09661 which looked rather interesting in my original focus image but was somewhat out of the field with NGC 5813 centered. With little of interest southwest of NGC 5813 but for NGC 5811 I kept in the frame I didn't hesitate to move NGC 5813 off center to better show UGC 09661.

Some of NGC 5813's true companions are interesting but they were too far out of the field to include. I'll have to catch those individually next year. Weather never allowed it to happen this year.

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

Related Designations for NGC5813

NGC5850

NGC 5850 and NGC 5846 are a pair of large galaxies in far eastern Virgo not far from M5. NGC 5850, at first glance, appears like a normal barred spiral but look closer. It is an oddball in that it is a double barred spiral -- A barred spiral inside a barred spiral. NGC 5846 appears to be a rather ordinary large elliptical galaxy but again, looks are deceiving. It is sloshed and has no defined core (I wasn't able to show this, however) and has other unexpected features. How do you explain these two oddities?

One way is to assume they have had a high-speed collision. At least that's the opinion of one paper. http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-3881/115/1/80/fulltext/ But this assumes they are at about the same distance. NGC 5850 is 126 million light-years distant by redshift but non-redshift distances average out to about 65 million light-years. One non-redshift measurement says 92 million. Quite a difference. NGC 5846 is 88 million light-years by redshift and 84 million by other means. This is a good agreement. Note the paper considers this a high-speed interaction so the large redshift of 5850 may just reflect a high speed through the Virgo Cluster.

I mentioned NGC 5846 while looking normal, it really isn't. You can read about these issues at this poster http://cxc.harvard.edu/cdo/xclust11/posters/Machacek_Marie.pdf . It doesn't mention NGC 5850 as being the cause, however. It does indicate that its companion NGC 5846A is being stripped by ram pressure as it falls into NGC 5846.

I'm going to assume that lone non-redshift of 92 million is closer to the truth for NGC 5850 and assign a distance of 85 million for both on the assumption the article on their interaction is correct. That would make it a very large spiral of 150,000 light-years in diameter. It is classified as SB(r)b by NED. But I think it should be SB(r)(r)b if such a classification was legal. The first ring being the ring formed around the large bar where the two arms virtually overlap creating a pseudo-ring. The second for the small one around the inner bar. This ring is a bit indistinct at one point on the east side. It too comes off the ends of the inner bar which is rotated about 60 degrees clockwise from the large bar. A dark dust lane seems to outline this inner ring. Many when imaging this galaxy blow out the core missing this hard to explain inner structure. Is this inner barred spiral due to interaction with 5846 or something else? I found nothing that explained this though several sources noted the 60-degree rotation of the inner bar. Some sources consider the odd blue somewhat radial streak at about 5 o'clock to be an edge on spiral. NED lists it and the below center blob in the streak as two separate galaxies but provides no redshift data.

NGC 5850 was discovered by William Herschel on February 24, 1786. It is in the second Herschel 400 list. While I note seeing it when observing NGC 5846 I gave no description. Herschel found NGC 5846 the same February night. It is in the first Herschel 400 list. I guess I wasn't very impressed with either as I just say it is a round, bright puff of a galaxy with NGC 5850 in the same 120x field. NED gives a size of 4.1' for its longest diameter. On my FITS frames, it fades out making the edge impossible to determine. I set an arbitrary level of 25 ADU higher than background for the edge which is conservative. I get about 7.05' for the maximum diameter and see hints out much further. Using the 7.05' size it and 85 million light-year distance it is about 175,000 light-years across, likely I'd get least 200,000 in a longer exposure.

The only other NGC galaxy in the image is NGC 5845 which has a similar redshift to 5846. I didn't catch all of it as for some reason I told the software to aim at 5850 rather than halfway between 5850 and 5846. It too was discovered by William Herschel on that same February night but didn't make either list nor did I mention it when recording 5846. Redshift indicates it is likely related to NGC 5846. It is classed simply as E:. Since I didn't pick it all up I can't measure its size on my frame. Using the size given by NED of 0.8' and assuming it is at about the same distance as 5846 then it is 20 million light-years across.

Near the left edge of my frame is CGCG 021-013. It is listed as S0/a by NED. Yet a note at NED reads: "One SDSS position refers to the eastern knot in the bar." This obviously refers to the blue blob at the left end of "the bar." Odd that it isn't classified as having a bar! Nearby is CGCG 021-015 which, while listed as Sbc is so fuzzy I can't see any real structure to it, just fuzzy patches that overlap. Is it two interacting galaxies?

ELG seen for many objects stands for emission line galaxy. These tended to be far fainter than their magnitudes in NED would indicate. There were so many and most so faint after a bit I just stopped annotating them unless they were reasonably bright (rare). Most galaxies had only positions for catalog names that were so long that with so many of them they'd have filled the image making labels nearly impossible. Others while having names had ones so long they were sometimes even longer than the positional names. I couldn't begin to fit these in and only list them as G with their distance or Q for quasar or UvES for Ultraviolet Excess Source which really means candidate quasar with only a photographic redshift (noted with a "p" after the distance estimate. That applies to the z value as well. Even though the field was near the celestial equator where I'd expect at least a couple asteroids none showed up.

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

Related Designations for NGC5850

NGC5851

The three galaxies in the center are the WBL Galaxy Group. NGC 5851, 5852 and PGC 53961 at about 310 million light-years in southeastern Bootes. Several other galaxies in the field have a similar redshift so are likely members of the same local galaxy group just that they are too far from the three to have made the group. Groups tend to be mostly elliptical or S0 galaxies. In this case, two are obvious spirals and while NED lists the third as a spiral as does Seligman and the NGC project it looks more like S0 to my eye. Apparently, its red and dead appearance sways me. The three galaxies span a distance of only 285,000 light-years if all are at the same distance making it a rather compact group. A fourth member is just to the west but for some reason didn't make the WBL 543 club. I guess being a dwarf just doesn't cut it.

The two NGC galaxies were discovered by William Herschel on May 26, 1791, but neither made a Herschel 400 observing program.

The field contains over 3000 galaxies listed in NED. That's likely far more than the number of stars in the image. I only annotated those with redshift information at NED. In doing so I opened two cans of worms, however. Both involve galaxy clusters in the image. To the south of NGC 5851 is the cluster GMBCG J226.75567+12.75014 at 2.96 billion light-years. NED shows the galaxy I point to as WHL J150706.5+124511 BCG. That carries the name of a different galaxy cluster. NED also shows the galaxy with the GMBCG J226.75567+12.75014 name. It's not uncommon for both these catalogs to list the same cluster so at this point I wasn't too bothered but why wasn't the cluster also named under the WHL name? Then I came to a different cluster to the east of this one that did carry the WHL J150706.5+124511 name at 4.09 billion light-years but that didn't have any bright cluster galaxy listed for it. Of course not as that was given to the other cluster. Mistakes like this are rare but happen so I continued. Then I came to the bright cluster galaxy GMBCG J226.66794+12.74274 BCG. But there was no cluster by that name at that location. Its distance was listed at 3.98 billion light-years. Then below and to the left where nothing is seen, I find a galaxy cluster with that same name said to have 8 members and only 320 million light-years distant. Thus WBL 543 would be a member of this cluster if that was right! The galaxy and cluster names were too long for the annotated image but you should have to trouble finding them or in the case of the last cluster not finding it though the label is at its location. I've never encountered an error at NED of this level before. Two in one small part of an image is also unheard of. Someone was having a bad day or is this done automatically by software that has a bug in it? I know a lot of their info comes directly by computer from the Sloan database so it could be something in that has a bug in it. I didn't notice anything else wrong in the field but who knows. If individual objects were scrambled with no second reference as with cluster and the anchoring bright cluster galaxy I'd not be able to detect there was an error.

While transparency for this image was very good clouds did move in and ruin one of the red frames so I only have one red frame for this one. Fortunately, the only satellite in that frame didn't cross anything important as could be cloned out without harm.

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

Related Designations for NGC5851

NGC5857

NGC 5857 and NGC 5859 are a pair of non-interacting galaxies. By redshift, they are very close neighbors though Tully Fisher measurements indicate they may be very widely separated. All Tully Fisher measurements for both were made the same way. Those listed for 5859 have three that put it much closer than redshift says, the fourth agrees with redshift measurements. Using the same system by the same authors the four measurements of 5857 agree quite well. If the closer Tully Fisher distances are used for 5859 then the two galaxies are about the same size. 5859 would be 120,000 light-years in diameter with NGC 5857 being 97,000 light-years in diameter. Using the far distance for 5859 its diameter is 174,000 light-years. That seems way too big to me. Until I learn differently I'm going to say the Tully Fisher measurement for NGC 5859 is more likely representative of its true distance and size.

Another issue with NGC 5859 is its status as a barred spiral. I can't see any hint of a bar. It appears to me the arms go in right to the core though it is so edge on this may be misleading. One note at NED also disagrees with the barred spiral classification saying they can't detect a bar either.

NGC 5857 and NGC 5859 were discovered by William Herschel on April 27, 1788. Neither are in either H400 program.

There are two other galaxies in the image at about the distance of NGC 5857. They are much smaller and while blue are of lower surface brightness as well. The only carry Sloan positions and ASK numbers for their catalog entries.

Many other interesting galaxies are in the field, most I wanted to know about had no redshift data, unfortunately. For some reason, I took one more blue frame than normal. I must have thought one of the first two was not usable but all three were of similar quality and similar to the other colors as well. Might be I just hit the wrong key.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RG=2x10' B=3x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC5857

NGC5860

NGC 5860 as a pair (one source says trio) of colliding galaxies in Bootes about 250 million light-years from us. I've labeled the southern galaxy as NGC 5860A and the northern B though I didn't find any such formal designation. NED uses Notes 1 and Notes 2. This appears to be a rather old system in that the stars are mostly white rather than blue. Both maybe starburst galaxies. One note at NED says they are; "...a merging pair with fading starburst signatures." Though NED itself doesn't mention any starburst activity for the individual galaxies, it does say of the combination, Star-burst nucleus" and classifies the combination as S?. The pair was discovered by John Herschel on May 1, 1828.

There are two somewhat blue condensations in the Sloan image that appear white in mine. The difference is possibly due to the Sloan data containing a near Uv channel that would add strong blue light I don't see as my filters block Uv light. The one in 5860B is to the northeast while the one to in 5860A is to the northeast. I mentioned one source sees this system as a triple. It identifies the blue knot around 5860A as the third galaxy. I've noted it in the annotated image. No other source seems to consider this object a separate galaxy. To me, it seems virtually identical to the other blue knot. NED lists 5860A and B simply as E. The NGC project lumps them together and classifies the two as S0.

The field has one other galaxy at the same redshift as NGC 5860. It is on the far left above center. It is KISSR 1910 and is listed at NED as being a starburst galaxy. All other galaxies in the field lie well beyond these galaxies, often billions of light-years beyond. I've noted 4 major star clusters in the image. There were several others in NED listed as being candidate galaxy clusters but had no count, diameter or even a hint at where the anchoring galaxy was. For those listed all used photographic redshift measurements for the cluster itself but a couple used spectroscopic distance measurements for the Bright Cluster Galaxy. Another used the same photographic measurement for both (listed as GC/G but with one distance, not two. The fourth didn't have any redshift data on its BCG so while the label is beside the apparent BCG it is labeled only GC with one distance measurement. There was only one quasar listed for this deep field. It isn't listed as being much further away than some of the galaxies at 5.65 billion light-years.

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

Related Designations for NGC5860

NGC5879

NGC 5879 is a somewhat edge on spiral galaxy in Draco only a bit over a degree northwest of the far better known NGC 5907 a really edge-on flat galaxy. Redshift puts it about 39 million light-years distant but Tully-Fisher measurements say it is further at about 53 million light-years. I took this on a very poor night for seeing though transparency was good. My resolution, as well as that of others, would indicate it is at least 53 million light-years distant so I'll go with that. That makes it about 75,000 light-years across. It was discovered by William Herschel on May 5, 1788 and is in the second Herschel 400 observing list. The main reason I put it on my to-do list.

NED shows many very faint and distant galaxies in the background. I have annotated those that survived my bad seeing. A couple quasars carry unfamiliar descriptions I've not seen before. One is listed as FSRQ which stands for Flat Spectrum Radio Quasar. This is unusual for a quasar. Even more unusual is another quasar which is listed as RQQ which means Radio Quiet Quasar. Quasars are usually very strong at radio frequencies. For one to be unusually quiet is rare. Note these aren't totally radio silent just a lot quieter than normal. As usual UvES objects are quasar candidates with only photographic redshifts which can be misleading when certain types of stars in our galaxy mimic their photographic spectra. But near the top of my image is a UvES object listed as being a galaxy by some and a Broad Line AGN by others. Since quasars are normally BLAGNs and this one has a spectroscopic rather than photographic redshift I was surprised it wasn't listed as a quasar. To its southwest was a quasar, at least NED says it is, that only had a photographic redshift. These are usually listed as candidate quasars, not full-blown ones. Taking the conservative approach I labeled it CQ rather than Q.

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

Related Designations for NGC5879