NGC5485

NGC 5485 is a strange galaxy. It shows a nice SA0 shape but then has a totally unexpected red dust band at nearly right angles to the major axis of the galaxy. Some claim it is a polar ring galaxy. http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-ref?bibcode=2017A%26A...606A..62T.

It is located less than a degree from M101. Though over 4 times more distant so therefore not a member of the M101 group as some websites say. This field contains 4 NGC galaxies that appear to be part of a local group. Only NGC 5486 has a redshift that doesn't fit but the non-redshift distance estimates for all four are a good match. I suspect NGC 5486 just has a different redshift because of its orbit around the center of mass of this group. Quite a few other galaxies in the field also lie at a distance that makes them likely lesser members of the group.

Inside the halo of NGC 5485 to the southeast, there's something that to me appears to be a near edge on galaxy seen right through the stars of NGC 5485. Neither NED nor SIMBAD show anything at its position. I expected NED to at least know about it but apparently not.

Just southwest of NGC 5485 is a fuzzy blob of a galaxy. NED lists it as the star SDSS J140706.41+545838.9 but gives a spectroscopic redshift that puts it about 120 million light-years distant. Thus it appears to really be a galaxy and may be a dwarf member of the group. Why NED insists on listing it as a star I don't know. SIMBAD doesn't list it at all.

NGC 5473 was discovered by William Herschel on April 14, 1789 as was NGC 5484, NGC 5485 and NGC 5486. He was having a very productive night it would seem. NGC 5473 made the original Herschel observing program. My entry for that on May 17, 1985 with my 10" f/5 on a fair night hurt by high humidity at up to 120x reads: "Small, slightly oval galaxy with a star-like nucleus. Near a chain of a few field stars." Odd I didn't mention seeing NGC 5485. It may be a more difficult visual object as it only made it into the Herschel 2 observing program. I found only a very few amateur images of this galaxy. The only amateur images I found of these galaxies was a few wide field shots of M101 that happened to pick them up. I was happy to see the imagers knew they were in the image. How many took the field and didn't realize what the small galaxies were? Without searching hundreds of wide field M101 images.

The rest of the field is rather typical of my images.

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

Rick



http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/NGC/NGC5485-NGC5484-NGC5473-NGC5486/NGC5485L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/NGC/NGC5485-NGC5484-NGC5473-NGC5486/NGC5485L4X10RGB2X10CROP125.JPG
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/NGC/NGC5485-NGC5484-NGC5473-NGC5486/NGC5485L4X10RGB2X10ID.JPG

Related Designations for NGC5485

NGC5514

NGC 5514 is a colliding pair of galaxies in Boötes about 350 million light-years away. NED classes NED01 as Sa and NED02 as Sb. The NGC project only classifies the combination which it sees as Sab. I classify them as a mess. NED shows a distance of 330 million light-years for the combined entry for NGC 5519 but 350 million light-years for the individual galaxies that make it up. I've seen this type of discrepancy before. If anyone knows why please let me know and I'll pass it on. NGC 5514 would seem to find any of several of Arp's categories for plumed galaxies or even that of a spiral galaxy with a high surface brightness companion on an arm. Lots of possibilities here but Arp didn't include it yet included several lesser examples for some reason. I didn't realize the western plume existed when I planned for this image. It wasn't until I went to process it a year later than I realized it was there. I needed a lot more exposure time to pick it up very well. This will have to do for now. It was discovered by Heinrich d'Arrest on April 26, 1865.

NGC 5519/5570 is to the southeast. It too has a similar redshift putting it about the same distance as NGC 5514's components. Its distorted arm may indicate it too tangled with NGC 5514 in the distant past. It would fit Arp's category for a spiral with one heavy arm or maybe a one-armed spiral.

NGC 5519 is identified as NGC 5570 by NGC project saying "NGC 5570 is probably WH's first observation of NGC 5519. His description reads, "vF, forming an arch with 3 sts." NGC 5519 indeed forms an arch with two stars west and southwest, and a third is superposed on the galaxy. WH's observation puts N5570 21m 15s p, 0d 34' s of 31 Bootis. This is 6 minutes of time off the position of N5519. I think that the "21m" is a transcription error and should read "27m." In that case, the RA as well as the Dec and the description would match N5519. - Dr. Harold G. Corwin, Jr."

Both NED and NGC Project classify it as Sa though it sure looks like it has a bar to me.

I did it again. In the upper right of the image is a faint asteroid trail. Checking the minor planet center I find nothing down past magnitude 23 in this area on the night this was taken, March 28, 2011 at 2 a.m. UT. There are two much brighter ones out of the frame to the north. Apparently, I've missed finding another one by over a year.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC5514

NGC5523

NGC 5523 drew my attention because in POSS images the core looked well off center. While it is very slightly east of center this is only a very slight offset. Turns out the POSS exposures create an illusion it is further off center than it really is due to the inner bright disk's center being nearly a half minute west of the core. The core is nearly centered in the entire disk. Still, it turns out to be an interesting galaxy. One paper, https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.05968 , says that while it is an isolated galaxy it has likely had many non-destructive mergers. According to the authors, it is all alone because it has merged with all its neighbors. I measure its size at about 77,000 light-years. It was discovered by William Herschel on May 19, 1784. It is in the second Herschel 400 observing program. Unfortunately, as I've mentioned before my notes from that were lost in my move to Minnesota.

One galaxy south and a bit west of NGC 5523, LEDA 1729736, appears double with a bright region southwest of the northeastern part. Looking at the SLOAN image it is hard to tell if this is one or two galaxies. Neither shows a nucleus. For now, I'm going to say it is one very irregular galaxy. Nothing else in the frame attracted my attention.

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

Related Designations for NGC5523

NGC5529

NGC 5529/FGC 1735 is a massive flat galaxy with a warped disk in Bootes about 140 million light-years from us. At that distance, it is a bit over 250,000 light-years across, twice the size of our galaxy which is a big one. Thus it met two criteria I use for finding targets, a member of the FGC catalog and distorted. It should remind you of the Needle Galaxy NGC 4565 and NGC 128 though there are some major differences. NGC 4565 has a round central bulge while NGC 5529 has a box-like core with 4 "points" much like NGC 128 I ran October 1st of this year. Also like NGC 128, both arms are warped in the same direction while with NGC 4565 the arms are warped in opposite directions and only at the very ends. It does have the strong dust lane and coloring of NGC 4565 while NGC 128 had neither but did have the most obvious box or peanut core I know of while it is rather subtle in NGC 5529. The "points are rather hidden on the northern side unless you look for them. NED and the NGC project class it as an edge on Sc galaxy. One paper says it is exactly edge-on though to me it appears a few degrees away from that as the dust lane is a bit north of being centered and the northern "points" of the box are mostly hidden behind the closer structure of the galaxy while the southern points are seen against the black background sky. It was discovered by William Herschel on May 1, 1785. It is in the second H400 program.

A box structure is usually indicative of an interaction with other galaxies, usually from digesting a companion or two. NGC 5529 certainly has some dwarf companions but none appear large enough to warp a galaxy of the massive size of NGC 5529. So I'm going out on a limb and say the warping is due to galaxies it digested long ago creating the box-like core. In the annotated image I've noted the true companions by showing their catalog name as well as a redshift distance in the 140 to 150 million light-year range. The differences are due to orbital motions about the group rather than actual distance differences. Note three of the 4 companions are very small, IKPM 1, IKPM 2 and Kregal B with MCG +06-31-085a being larger but very diffuse and low density. There are other galaxies "near" NGC 5529 but they are much more distant and thus not true companions. I found several images of this galaxy claiming KUG 1413+364 was a companion. Sure appears likely but the redshift shows it to be more than twice as distant. Appearances can be very deceiving. Note "nearby" galaxies over a billion light-years away are larger in apparent size than some of its true companions. The star-like feature in MCG +06-31-085a is composed of two blue knots of stars in the galaxy that nearly overlap. My resolution is not sufficient to separate them. In any case, it's not due to a foreground star as it might appear.

There's a good paper on this galaxy at: http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/aa/full/2007/41/aa7729-07/aa7729-07.right.html As published: http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2007/41/aa7729-07.pdf .

To the east of NGC 5529 is a small galaxy group at a distance of about 890 million light-years. One member of the group is highly distorted, MAPS-NGP O_271_0108262. I've included it as an inset in the cropped and enlarged image. The apparently closest galaxy to the south has no redshift. While appearances can be deceiving I'm going to assume it is likely the cause of the tidally distorted arms on the galaxy to its north.

I often come across galaxies missed by NED. I happened across many in this image. One is right below NGC 5529. I've marked them in the annotated image with a question mark. In the upper left you'll find three question marks in a row. This is because the three galaxies to their left are all missed by NED. Though two, (the leftmost) appear to be one in my image the Sloan image shows them both quite clearly. Most interesting is the example to the southwest where I marked SDSS J141632.42+360550.5 which is a tiny faint galaxy almost lost in the glare of a far larger and bright galaxy to its south. The big one is not in NED for some reason. That's often the case, faint ones picked up, brighter are overlooked. Why I don't know. I made no search for these. I have only noted those I happened across while annotating the image. How many more there are in the image I can't say. NED picks these up using automated software. It seems there are still some bugs to be worked out in the detection algorithms.

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

Related Designations for NGC5529

NGC5533

NGC 5533 is a very large spiral galaxy in northwestern Boötes. Its large size is due to a very faint outer arm structure. I was only slightly successful in picking it up as this image was plagued with the same fog that hit me earlier in the evening with NGC 4689. This cost me most of the faint detail and hit the color frames significantly. Only 1 red frame was usable, the blue and green frames were awful but it was better to use both than only one. Somehow the system kept working through the fog so I didn't know the harm until too late to reshoot it.

I couldn't find much in the way of images of this galaxy. The Sloan image shows it as very red compared to what I got. Seligman has an image of unknown origin that show it much bluer than I do. Which is right I can't say due to the poor conditions when I took my image. I measure its physical size at about 187,000 light-years. Others say more like 200,000 light-years. One star cloud in its extended arms can be seen beyond a star to the southeast of the galaxy's core. I had to stretch the image more than normal to start to show the fainter objects and extent of the galaxy. This leaves more noise than I would prefer but considering the conditions it is acceptable.

The most distant galaxy I was able to bring out is listed by NED at 7 billion light-years. I see it as a point source. It also appears as a blue star in the Sloan image. So while I left it annotated as a galaxy I am quite sure it is really a quasar. It is in the worst part of my frame for fog. There's a 4.8 magnitude K1III or K0III star just off the frame to the east. It created a huge glare in the fog that spilled into the entire image but was worse in this area. No way I could see a galaxy at that distance under these conditions. I'd find it nearly impossible under good conditions. Due to the fog, I was unable to annotate many objects I would have under normal conditions.

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

Related Designations for NGC5533

NGC5534

NGC 5534/Markarian 1379 is a very strange galaxy in western Virgo, almost into Libra. That may explain why a Virgo galaxy is in an area where virtually no galactic studies are being conducted. I came up nearly blank on the field but for this galaxy and its satellite. Redshift puts it at 130 million light-years though a single estimate based on a Type II supernova that was seen in 2001 puts it at about one hundred million light-years away. In any case, it lies beyond the Virgo Cluster. NED classifies it as (R')SAB(s)ab pec with HII while Seligman says (R)SAB(s)ab? pec and lists it as being a starburst galaxy. NGC project says simply Sbab, I think they mean SBab. It was discovered April 29, 1881 by Wilhelm Temple. It was found a couple weeks later on May 17, 1881 by Édouard Stephan.

On the east side is a mess of blue objects seen against the red color of the galaxy. That is listed by NED as MRK 1379a and is described as "Satellite galaxy projected on MRK 1379." I think that's ambiguous as to it being in front or behind the galaxy. Redshift is nearly identical giving no help in the matter. Has it been distorted by the encounter? Is it responsible for NGC 5534 being a starburst galaxy? I couldn't find any definite answer so will say maybe to both.

The field contains two other strange galaxies or interacting galaxies. I can't tell from my image. I've annotated both with their catalog names. The one to the east is made up of several discrete parts as if it may be more than one very distant galaxy likely interacting or it may be simply a rather nearby irregular galaxy, possibly related to NGC 5534. Without any information on it I can't say though it is listed in the Galex catalog of ultraviolet sources so is full of very massive, hot stars. Irregular galaxies going through rapid star formation, as well as interacting galaxies, could both cause this.

To the west (right) is a very fuzzy galaxy likely with a plume or plumes. It has no obvious pieces, just a fuzzy patch. It didn't make the UV catalog but is somewhat blue in color. Again, thanks to nearly no information on this field I have no idea what is going on here either.

There were about 10 asteroids in the field that normally would have been seen but due to the bad conditions, only 4 are visible even on the raw FITS files. The brightest is at least 1.5 magnitudes fainter than it should be with lots of gaps due to total cloud cover. It is: "(17720) Manuboccuni = 1997 XH10 -- Emanuele Boccuni (b. 1969) is a composer of new age music, many of his compositions referring to the sky. He composed The night and the stars for the discoverer. (Tombelli, M. of Cima Ekar's Asiago Astrophysical Observatory)." This is in Italy if you were wondering.

Conditions for this image were horrible. I'd not planned on imaging this night due to heavy clouds but they suddenly opened enough the software decided to suddenly open the roof and start taking data on this field. Conditions were really too poor as clouds constantly blocked the field while high clouds put a strong fog across the image. Look at the asteroid trail of Manuborccuni to see how broken it is. The other trails should be about as long yet are shorter as being too faint to record much of the time. It immediately went back on the reshoot list but bad weather prevented that. It is low so my time to catch it passed and I had to go with what data I had. Stars are very wonky due to bad seeing as well as the sudden opening lot allowing time for tube currents to subside. I amazed myself that I somehow pulled a usable image from the mess. Didn't help that this field is on the southern edge of the Geostationary satellite belt so I had a mess of them to remove. Fortunately, many came through when cloudy so didn't do as much harm as usual in this part of the sky. Still, when working with crumby data I don't need them as an added complication. Most were in the color frames where I only had two usable for each color adding to the work of removing them.

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

Related Designations for NGC5534

NGC5548

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

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

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

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

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

Related Designations for NGC5548

NGC5576

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Designations for NGC5576

NGC5584

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

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

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

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

Related Designations for NGC5584

NGC5585

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

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

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

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

Related Designations for NGC5585