NGC5252

I made another attempt at a voorwerpjes galaxy. This time NGC 5252 but conditions this night were awful. My sky was 4 times brighter than a previous night when I captured NGC 5972 I posted right after I took it in May. I saw no hint of the structure in the raw images as they came in. But this was because the high background washed it out of the raw images. Once properly calibrated it began to show up. Still, the image is very noisy compared to 5972 and I can't trust some of the green I picked up. It doesn't seem to quite match the HST image location. Though some is out of the HST's limited field of view. ( https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic1507f/ Rotated about 90 degrees counterclockwise from my image.) This one needs to be redone but it was too far west by the time I realized this. In fact, it was already too far west when taken, that's why the background was so bright. It was in the light dome of a town of 4000 16 miles to the southwest of my location. Still, some of the structures definitely match. It amazes me what amateur gear can accomplish today. When I started in the mid 50's film couldn't begin to match film at major observatories but digital has helped level the playing field. We just need a lot more time with our smaller scopes.

William Herschel didn't know of voorwerpes when he discovered this one on February 2, 1786. It didn't make either program.

NGC 5252 is listed as an S0 Seyfert galaxy. The Seyfert status, as well as the voorwerpjes around it, are likely due to the galaxy it ate which then fired up the black hole in its center to quasar status. That lit up the voorwerpjes then faded down to only Seyfert status today but the light echo is still propagating our way. Redshift puts the galaxy about 330 million light-years distant. That makes this a huge galaxy of some 230,000 light-years long including the voorwerpjes and 200,000 light-years for the galaxy itself. Looking around the field there are a lot of other galaxies at this same distance. These include CGCG 045-060 an Sc galaxy that itself is about 75,000 light-years across. Most of the others are small dwarf size galaxies. But near the upper left is UGC 0865 a double galaxy. The edge on to the lower right is a distant 1.12 billion light-years distant and thus large at 150,000 light-years. It's apparently larger "companion is an Sbc spiral at about the same redshift as NGC 5252 so likely part of its local group. It is half the size of its "smaller" companion at 75,000 light-years. Obviously while the share common catalog entries in several catalogs they are totally unrelated.

The field is in Virgo not far from the border with Bootes. NGC 5252 was yet another William Herschel discovery made on April 11, 1785. It is apparently too faint to have made either Herschel 400 observing program.

14" LX200R @ f/8, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC5252

NGC5256

NGC 5256/Mrk 266 is a pair of colliding and merging galaxies. Their stars have been thrown about all over the place creating a field of plumes around the two cores of what were likely spiral galaxies prior to the collision. The mess stretches over at least 220 million light-years in my image assuming a distance of 350 million light-years. It is classified as simply peculiar by NED. The southwest galaxy is listed as being a Seyfert 2 galaxy while the other is LINER. The entire mess is listed as a starburst galaxy as well as a Luminous InfraRed Galaxy. The NGC project, however, classes it as Sab/Pec. Redshift puts the galactic mess at 390 million light-years, but the HST has shown it to be more likely 350 million light-years distant. It is located in the southeast corner of Ursa Major only 1.75 degrees northwest of the far more famous interacting pair of galaxies known as M51. The object was discovered by William Herschel on May 12, 1787. It is too small and faint to appear in either of the Herschel 400 observing programs. For more on it see the HST image and text at: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0810bn/ It is a false-color image made from a blue filter near the Ultraviolet band and a near IR image so the colors won't match mine. For a lot more on this galaxy see: https://www.noao.edu/meetings/bbh/files/2012NovTucson_Mrk266_Mazz.pdf Coverage of NGC 5256 starts about page 16.

What is interesting is that there is a second pair of interacting galaxies seen through the western plume. It is just a blob in my image but shows rather well in the HST image. I find nothing listed at that position in NED or SIMBAD. The HST page doesn't even mention it either.

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

Related Designations for NGC5256

NGC5280

NGC 5275 and NGC 5280 are located in a rich galaxy field in Canes Venatici about 1.5 degrees north of the far more famous M3. While the 5 largest galaxies constitute the WBL 464 galaxy group I couldn't determine exactly what cluster the vast majority of these belong to. There appear to be three main groups, one about 500 million light-years, another at 600 million light-years and a third at 850 million light-years. There's lots of overlap here. The most distant group are likely members of the ABELL 7181 galaxy cluster listed at 830 million light-years. It is a very large but sparse cluster with a center about a minute beyond the left border about midline.

The reason I imaged the field was NGC 5275, also known as VV 543E, An E or maybe S0 galaxy that's quite compact so of rather high mass. It has an apparent companion, VV 543W, a blue spiral that's somewhat distorted with a detached blue star cloud at its south end. This makes the illusion that is it highly warped into a curve around NGC 5275. However, it is an illusion. While it appears distorted it isn't warped after all. The Sloan Survey image clearly shows the arms that appear drawn toward NGC 5275 and the detached piece. My seeing was too poor to show this very clearly. So are they interacting? I found nothing in the literature on this pair addressing this. Redshift puts them about 70 million light-years apart. If correct they are members of two different groups and thus not interacting. Could the difference be due to a high-speed difference between the two? I find this unlikely as such a big speed difference would mean they were within interaction range for far too short of a time to create this distortion.

The NGC galaxies were all discovered by Édouard Stephan. He found NGC 5274 and NGC 5275 on May 25, 1881. The other two were found on May 23, 1881.

UGC 8682 to the northeast of NGC 5275 has a warped southeast end. At 500 million light-years it is another 70 million light-years closer than NGC 5275 so again it is doubtful NGC 5275 had anything to do with its distortion. But it is the same distance as NGC 5280. They could have interacted in the past. Unfortunately, I found nothing on these two either. The field is very poorly researched from what I could determine.

The annotated image lists all galaxies NED had redshift data on as well as a couple quasars. The quasar to the northeast was listed twice with a position difference of only 0.02" of arc and with a slightly different redshift. This is why it is listed with two z values. When converted to light travel time those values were the same within the three digit accuracy I use so only one light travel distance is shown.

If the galaxy had an entry in a common catalog it is listed by that catalog name, otherwise, just a G is used. Why some bright galaxies were missed by LEDA or others but but such catalogs picked up much smaller and fainter galaxies that were very close in position to each other I can't fathom.

I've included the Sloan image as transparency was so poor the night I took this I couldn't go nearly as deep as I would normally go, so a lot was lost.

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

Related Designations for NGC5280

NGC5297

Yet another interesting, apparently connected, galaxy pair amateurs ignore. NGC 5296 and NGC 5297 are a pair of interacting galaxies that Arp was well aware of yet, for some reason, didn't include in his atlas. I'll get to the Arp connection in a bit. This interacting pair is located in northeastern Canes Venatici at a distance of about 110 to 120 million light-years. Though one non-redshift measurement of NGC 5297 puts it nearly a billion light-years away I think we can safely consider that an anomalous result. The pair is sometimes likened to M31 and NGC 205 (M110). NGC 5297 is a large SAB(s)c spiral about 170,000 light-years across thanks to its wide but sparse arms. NGC 5297 was discovered by William Herschel on April 9, 1787 but its companion had to wait until George Stoney working for the Earl of Rosse found it on May 3, 1850. NGC 5297 isn't in either Herschel 400 list but maybe it should be.

NGC 5296 is an S0+: starburst galaxy. It has a very odd blue "secondary nucleus" to use one paper's term to the southeast of the main core. To me, it appears to be a large blue star cluster. Seeing was very poor for this image. I'd hoped to bring it out but seeing merged it with the core so it shows only as a blob on the side of the core. While listed as a dwarf its two tidal plumes give it a diameter of at least 45,000 light-years the main galaxy without the plumes is a large dwarf at 19,000 light-years.

Arp had a strange idea that he spent most of his life trying to prove but few subscribed to it. His idea was quasars were not the black hole centers of distant galaxies chowing down on stars, gas and dust to create their extreme brightness that is general consensus but instead are unknown objects ejected from active galaxies such as these. Their high redshifts weren't due to cosmological expansion but something else that required new physics. I won't claim to understand his claims. Some of this is covered in the Kanipe-Webb book "Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies" published by Willmann-Bell. Note the quasar to the southwest of NGC 5297, NGC 5296 BSO1. He reported a luminous extension from NGC 5236 pointed at the quasar. If you use the northern edge of the plume it sort of does run to the quasar but the center of it certainly doesn't. To Arp, this fits his theory. What he made of the other quasars in the field I don't know. In any case since space is at least 3 dimensional just because in two dimensions the quasar sort of lines up with the plume doesn't mean it does so in three dimensions. Indeed its redshift argues strongly against this. Until the other quasars in the field and just outside it can be tied in it doesn't mean much. Then there are the thousands of quasars found nowhere near (by angular separation) an active galaxy that his idea requires.

Conditions were poor for this image. A lot of detail was lost. It might actually get reshot in the future if better conditions prevail. But then don't hold your breath. I have a ton of others I want to get.

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

Related Designations for NGC5297

NGC5300

NGC 5300 is a rather low surface brightness, slightly barred spiral in Virgo about 67 million light-years from us by redshift and 75 million light-years by the median of Tully-Fisher measurements. NED classifies it as SAB(r)c spiral. Its structure consists mostly of arm segments rather than a classic grand design spiral. The segments contain many bright blue star clusters. It has no companions in my frame with all the other galaxies being much more distant so it sits rather lonely in a constellation normally thought of as jam-packed with galaxies. It was discovered by William Herschel on February 2, 1786 but isn't in either of the two Herschel observing programs. Assuming the distance is 67 million light-years its diameter is about 74,000 light-years. A respectable size for a spiral galaxy.

I wish seeing had been better. Weather is just not cooperating this fall and winter. Conditions went south on me during this one and I missed one red and one green. A few days later I managed to get the red frame but the weather never did allow a second green. The one had no satellites which made it reasonable to proceed to process it anyway.

Even though this field isn't all that far from the ecliptic I only picked up one very faint asteroid on the very eastern edge of my field. It was moving nearly due north in prograde motion. I apparently caught it as it was moving from retrograde motion as we passed it to normal prograde motion. While the Minor Planet Center puts its magnitude at 18.9 it appears far fainter than that. I know the night wasn't all that transparent and seeing poor but it is more like 20th magnitude in the image. In fact, I almost missed it. Normally when imaging this close to the ecliptic I pick up quite a few asteroids so catching only one is rare.

Objects labeled CQ are candidate quasars (to a radio amateur like myself CQ has an entirely different meaning which confuses my brain something awful) that NED seems to feel will turn out to be quasars as that is how they were labeled in the page of all galaxies in the image. But when you look it up its listed as a candidate. They also list some as stars on the first page but as candidate quasars on the individual page. A "p" after the redshift look back time means it was determined photographically. It's possible for a star to have a color cut off that mimics that of a distant quasar and thus fool a photographic redshift. This is one reason they are still listed as candidates.

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

Related Designations for NGC5300

NGC5331

This was another opportunity to catch two objects on my to-do list in one field. Maybe my desire to catch two objects is why I took them on such a poor night. This field is in central Virgo but doesn't contain any known members of the famous Virgo Cluster which is some 60 million light-years distant but all galaxies with known redshift in this image are over 200 million distant.

NGC 5331 is actually two galaxies both nearly a half billion light-years distant that are obviously interacting as there are some huge plumes created by their interaction. Unfortunately, this was taken on some very bad nights for transparency (what's new about that this month of May?) so the plumes don't show very well. The one north of the northern member is especially faint. I need to revisit this field on a better night. I measure the northern member, ignoring any plume at about 73,000 light-years across. I didn't include the plume to the north as it was just too faint for a good measurement. The southern member has an extended plume off both ends but especially the northwestern end. I measure its size with the plume, to the extent I see it under these conditions, at 218,000 light-years with the main part 82,000 light-years in size. On a night I'm not losing 2 magnitudes too high clouds (my cloud sensor said it was cloudy so I overrode it to keep imaging, maybe not a good idea) I'm sure both would measure larger. NED simply calls them spirals. The NGC Project says Sbc. That appears to be for both which doesn't make much sense. Seligman doesn't have anything on these two at all. The pair was discovered by William Herschel on May 13, 1793. As he gave it one entry I doubt he realized he was seeing two objects. Of course, the concept of galaxies never existed in his time so this isn't surprising.

My other target of interest is a pair of possibly interacting galaxies to the northeast, UGC 08787 and CGCG 045-130. Both are seen rather edge on. UGC 8787 makes the 2-micron flat galaxy catalog as it appears to have no central bulge. NED classifies it as Sbc: sp LLIRG. LLRG stands for Lower Luminosity InfraRed Galaxy (L<=sun^10.5) LIRG is Luminous Infrared Galaxy (L>sun^10.5<=sun^11) and ULIRG is Ultra Luminous Infrared Galaxy (L>sun^11<=sun^12 but what's over Sun^12 I don't know). This is measured in IR, not visual wavelengths. It has faint extensions off both ends that likely are larger than what I can show under these conditions. I find nothing on it to indicate if these are due to CGCG 045-130 that has virtually the same redshift. Both lie about 210 million light-years away. CGCG 045-130 seems to be either two galaxies or one with an off-center core. Oddly NED shows that Sloan sees a 21st magnitude star at the position of this blue blob at the southeast end of the galaxy. I'm going to assume it is just a star cloud in the galaxy. NED classifies it as Sc(f). The (f) means it is seen edge-on. I can't tell for sure but to me, it looks tilted 10 to 15 degrees away from edge-on. Is the blue object at the southeast end the result of interaction with UGC 08787? Again I found nothing on this.

At the top of the image is NGC 5329 and elliptical galaxy some 340 million light-years distant by redshift, 360 by a pair of Tully-Fisher measurements that disagree by a rather wide margin but average to 360 million light-years. I went with the redshift value and measured it at 234,000 light-years in diameter. Considering how bad the night was I suspect this underestimates its true size. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 30, 1789, four years before he found NGC 5331. Neither of these made either of the Herschel 400 observing programs.

There were several asteroids that normally would be seen in my image. Two are right at my limit and should have been easy. Two were too faint to find and should have been detected better than the two faint ones were. One was quite bright in the lower left of the image. Normally you'd see color trails but I took the color data a night earlier under even worse conditions so that asteroid wasn't in the image frame that night. Details on these are in the annotated image. The night color was taken had horrible seeing of about 7" when blue was taken 4 seconds for red. This causes some color issues. Green was between at 5 to 6 second seeing but only one frame was usable.

The annotated image had to omit about 30 objects that I'd have normally annotated. They just didn't make it through the clouds.

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

Related Designations for NGC5331

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