NGC5375

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

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

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

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

Related Designations for NGC5375

NGC5383

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

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

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

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

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

Related Designations for NGC5383

NGC5400

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

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

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

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

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

Related Designations for NGC5400

NGC5403

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

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

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

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

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

Related Designations for NGC5403

NGC5410

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

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

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

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

Related Designations for NGC5410

NGC5424

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

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

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

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

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

Related Designations for NGC5424

NGC5425

SN 2011ck was discovered by Jack Newton and Tim Puckett May 12, 2011 at magnitude 15.9. I imaged it June 2 and get a magnitude of 16.6. The image was taken on 2011, June, 2.26 If correct it is fading. SN2011by and SN2011dh were quite blue, this one shows a reddish color. Like the one in M51 it is listed as type IIP. The supernova is in NGC 5425, a galaxy about 100 million light years away in Ursa Major. NED classes it as Sd while the NGC project says Sc. These indicate widely spaced arms. While seen rather edge on the arms are hard to detect. I have trouble seeing them as this wide.

NED shows the blue knot at the southeast (lower left) end of the galaxy as a completely separate galaxy with about the same redshift. Again, it is hard to tell if it is a separate galaxy or just a knot in the arm. If the latter then the core of the galaxy is off center. Certainly a possibility but not necessarily the case. NGC 5425 was discovered by Lewis Swift on June 16, 1884.

The field has 3 quasars out to nearly 11 billion light years. Two are very blue even after red shift has greatly reddened their light.

Not having a pre SN image of the galaxy I've attached a Sloan Survey image taken prior to the supernova.

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

Related Designations for NGC5425

NGC5448

NGC 5448 is an interesting spiral in the southeast corner of Ursa Major. Redshift puts it 100 million light-years distant though Tully-Fisher measurements average out to about 120 million light-years. A rather good agreement actually. Assuming the 100 million light-year distance it is about 120,000 light-years in diameter making it a rather large spiral. NED classifies it as (R)SAB(r)a with and having an AGN (Active Galactic Nucleus). The NGC Project disagrees say simply it is SBb. It has a faint outer disk beyond a bright ring-like feature created by its spiral arms that nearly overlap. To my eye, the outer disk appears warped. That may be an illusion. It was much stronger in the FITS files than when processed with color added. No papers on it that I found mentions any warp so it likely is an illusion I can't shake. It also has some strange dark lanes across the disk inside the ring on the south side. Looks like a tot drew them in with a crayon. It was discovered by William Herschel on May 15, 1787. It is in the second H400 program.

There are some rather interesting truly distorted galaxies in the image that I didn't realize were there until I started looking around the field. Southeast of NGC 5448 is ASK 401001.0 at 390,000 light-years and further southeast is ASK 401000.0 also at 390,000 light years. They both appear "sloshed". That is their cores are well off center. Is this due to a near collision between these two sometime in the past? Then north of these two is ASK 401014.0 at 900,000 light-years. It is a nearly edge-on disk galaxy with an oddly warped disk. The eastern side is quite curved but the western side is less bent.

My color data was severely hit by thickening clouds. Red was taken when it was rather clear but the clouds moved in on the first green. It is very weak. The second green mostly blank. The first blue was weak but usable with the last blue lost to clouds. I never had a chance to reshoot it. I mostly recreated the green channel. While I cut down the red and boosted the blue it resulted in some poor color, especially for the distant galaxies which tended to look more orange than golden. I tried to adjust for NGC 5448 and ignored what it did to the distant galaxies.

There's a lot of fine detail in NGC 5448 I didn't catch due to the seeing. If I can ever get a night for 0.5" pixels it should really show some nice features lost to the gunk. With my large backlog of unprocessed images, I should just ignore those like the this and the last two I've posted. But then most of the spring was this way so I'd wipe out the backlog with one big delete. So I'm processing anything I can sort of salvage.

14" LX200R, L=4x10' R=2x10' G=1x10+pseudo green B=1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC5448

NGC5466

NGC 5456, like NGC NGC 5053, is a distant globular cluster that is likely being torn apart by our galaxies tidal forces. It is about 50,000 light-years distant and has a 45 degree long tidal tail of stars our galaxy is ripping away from it. The loss of stars likely accounts for its rather sparse appearance for a globular cluster though its core stars likely don't feel our galaxy's tidal forces. But if their orbit carries them to the outer parts of the cluster then they are fair game for the galaxy to steal them away. The cluster was found by William Herschel on May 17, 1784 in the constellation of Bootes. You can read about the tidal tail here: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0511/0511767v1.pdf

It is in the original H400 program. My notes with my 10" f/5 at 120x on a fair but humid hurt night read: "Large, very faint globular with only a hint of resolution. Evenly bright with no condensation in the center. Seems nearly round rather than oval as the preliminary guide indicates." It does seem slightly oval in my image to the NE and SW. Is that seen visually?

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

Related Designations for NGC5466

NGC5474

NGC 5474 is the classic example of a "sloshed" galaxy. As a satellite of M101, it was once thought its core was pulled off center by the gravity of the much larger M101. That's not quite the case. M101's gravity is involved but it is causing the contents of the galaxy to slosh back and forth much like a not congealed egg in a frying pan when the pan is moved back and forth. Note that you can see stars on the "missing" side. Just very few. So it hasn't lost the stars, just moved them to the other side temporarily. Adam Block has a bit more on this subject at: http://www.caelumobservatory.com/obs/n5474.html so I'll let you read it there.

It is classified as Sc? by Seligman and SA(s)cd pec HII by NED. It was first recorded by William Herschel on
This is a very early image of mine before I researched my images and before I really knew what I was doing. I reprocessed it a bit back in 2008 but it needs a lot more work if I ever find the time.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x10' RGB=2x10x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC5474