NGC6340

NGC 6340 is a rather odd face on SA(s)0/a galaxy in Draco I'd wanted to image but was hidden behind my Polaris trees. Redshift puts it about 53 million light-years away though a single Tully-Fisher measurement says 71 million. Note there are 3 other galaxies with redshifts between 52 and 57 million light-years and a pair in the 67 to 74 million light-year range. What this says I don't know. None of these have any distance measurement other than redshift.

What drew my attention to NGC 6340 was a note I found saying it had a very faint straight dust lane right through its core. It is only faintly seen in my image, especially on the west (right) side. It can be faintly followed to the eastern side but I'd never had noticed that without the note to guide me. A note indicates it is not seen in NIR (Near Infrared).

The arm structure is very faint. I've enhanced it in this image more than I normally enhance galaxy contrast. Note the spiral is not symmetrical. It is compressed on the south (bottom) side compared to the north side. It has a LINER nucleus so while the overall reddish color would indicate star formation has been low for many millions of years the core is still actively feeding on something. It was discovered by William Herschel on June 6, 1788. It isn't in either H400 program.

To its north is IC 1251, an Scd? galaxy with about the same redshift. It looks a bit torn up. Has it interacted with another galaxy in the group?

West of IC 1251 is IC 1254 also about the same redshift. It is classed as Sb? pec. It definitely has plumes indicating interaction in the recent past. Was that NGC 6340, IC 1251 or something else or something it merged with? Lots of questions but no answers. Both IC galaxies were discovered by Edward Swift on September 18, 1890.

The fourth galaxy with about the same redshift is PGC 059705. While the first three are mentioned at NED as being part of a group of three galaxies, PGC 059705 is ignored. Why isn't it part of the group? I have no idea.

How do the two galaxies just northeast of IC 1254 fit in? Still more questions without answers I could find.

Except for three galaxy clusters no other individual galaxy had a redshift measurement in NED but for one, RX J1712.5+7218 an X-ray galaxy found by the ROSAT X-ray orbiting telescope. The line I drew in the annotated image goes to the position NED had for it. ROSAT had poor resolution so its positions are uncertain with a 50 second of arc error circle. Could one of the two galaxies just south of the position be the source? A note at NED says "Eastern object in close pair." That would seem to fit the reddish object about 5 seconds of arc south of NED's position.

Since there was plenty of room I identified the other galaxies in the image with designations other than just their coordinates.

While the field is covered by the Sloan survey none had Sloan determined redshifts so the annotated image is rather sparsely labeled.

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

Related Designations for NGC6340

NGC6366

NGC 6366 is a faint, scattered, very reddened by galactic dust, globular star cluster in the constellation of Ophiuchus 3 degrees southwest of far better known M14. It is about 11,400 light-years from earth and 16,300 light-years from the center of the galaxy. It is classified as class XI. These tend to look much like open star clusters than globular star clusters. It's brightest star is only magnitude 13.6 so it isn't easily resolved even in fairly large amateur telescopes. NED shows it dimmed by 2.5 magnitudes in the V band where human vision is most sensitive. Photometric measurements show it 1.6 magnitudes brighter in red light than blue. This turns its stars quite red in my image. I color balanced to the photometric values, not the spectral values. The latter would have shown it much bluer erasing the reddening of the dust we are forced to look through to see this globular.

I had to move the cluster well right of center to keep the 4.5 magnitude F3V star, HD 157950, out of the frame. Even then it sent a nasty blue gradient across much of the image though it didn't quite reach to NGC 6366 itself. During the image, transparency was poor for the color data. It was a bit better but still far from "normal" when I took the luminance channel. This weak color data made getting color into these stars rather difficult.

It was discovered on April 12 1860 by Friedrich August Theodore Winnecke, a German astronomer. It is said by Auwers it was found using a 3" Merz refractor. He discovered other NGC objects, numbers 1398, 2146, 2276, 4760, 6791, and 6655. He is sometimes said to have found 2300 but it was seen 4 years earlier by Borrelly. He is sometimes credited as co-discoverer of 1360 but Swift found it 3 years earlier. Georg Friedrich Julius Arthur von Auwers another German astronomer included it in his list as Auwers 36. I can't tell if this is an independent discovery. Since these two were friends that shared data it may not be an independent discovery.

While there is a scattering of faint, highly dust-obscured galaxies in the frame none had redshift values so no annotated image was prepared.

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

Related Designations for NGC6366

NGC6384

NGC 6384 is a low surface brightness galaxy in Ophiuchus about 80 million light-years away. Not a constellation in which you find many nice spiral galaxies! It is more the globular cluster constellation. It is also the Zodiac constellation astrologers ignore. NED classes it as SAB(r)bc and as a LINER galaxy. The NGC Project using a different classification scheme says SBbc I. It is somewhat obscured and of low surface brightness making it a bit of a challenging target. I didn't try to correct the color for reddening. Due to it being somewhat obscured by our galaxies dust. Looking at various color images on the net I find it in a field of far more blue stars than I show. I can't explain the difference but it could be from adjusting the blue back into the galaxy but not excluding the unobscured stars from this blue boost. I used the simple G2V balancing of the unobscured stars. This likely left the galaxy too red due to extinction. It was discovered by Albert Marth on June 10, 1863.

Being in a heavily obscured area of the sky it is not covered by the Sloan survey. Only 6 galaxies are listed in NED as being in this field, none with any distance data but NGC 6384 itself.

Several papers indicated the arms were smooth and featureless. That certainly isn't the impression I got in my image so I had to do some digging. I found a great Hubble Space Telescope image of it that certainly doesn't show the arms as smooth and featureless. Also, several papers indicated there was no star formation going on in the core. Strange as most theories on barred spirals say the bar funnels in gas and dust triggering star formation around the core area. The text with the Hubble image says that they see star formation around the core area triggered by dust and gas that is being funneled into the core. Odd the experts can't seem to agree on what's going on in this much studied galaxy. The HST image and text is at: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1108a/

I'll let their webpage fill in the details sparse as they are.

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

Related Designations for NGC6384

NGC6395

IC 1261 is a pair of galaxies in a common halo located about 625 million light-years from us in northern Draco not far from the bowl of the "Little Dipper". Left to right they are PGC 060185 and PGC 060186. Redshift puts the latter slightly further away but that is likely just due to their relative motion and not a valid distance difference. The common faint halo measures some 375,000 light-years across. The galaxies themselves, ignoring the halo are much smaller. I get a size of PGC 060185 as 75,000 light-years and PGC 060186 as 85,000 light-years. NED lists both as elliptical E galaxies while Seligman says 060185 is E/S0 and 060186 as E2. The pair was discovered by Lewis Swift on September 8, 1888.

The only other galaxy in the frame with redshift data is NGC 6395. It is listed by NED as Scd: The NGC project says Sc pec and Seligman says Sc?? pec. At first glance, it seems like a normal spiral but when you look closer there are no spiral arms. One rather bright arm segment and then nothing but a random mess of star clouds. Also while it isn't seen edge on it does give the impression of having no central bulge and thus being quite flat though it isn't in any flat galaxy catalog. Redshift puts it only 51 million light-years away. 13 non-redshift measurements (all but one Tully-Fisher) have a median value of 70 million light-years. It was discovered by Edward Swift on September 18, 1884. Its position was later refined by Guillaume Bigourdan. If you look closely at my image you can see it extends a lot further both north and south than it first appears to. Using its full diameter of 172 seconds on my image and the 70 million light-year distance it is 58,000 light-years across. I found surprisingly little on this very strange spiral that has a disk but no real spiral structure. I'm guessing this as well as the large faint extensions are due to something it digested in the recent past.

While NED lists over 4000 galaxies within 20 minutes of the center of my frame only these three have any data to speak of. Unfortunately, this is quite common when working above 70 degrees declination. NED does list a few galaxy clusters but I see only the BCG at those positions and the distances are photographic so not all that reliable. With so little to go on, I didn't bother to create an annotated image.

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

Related Designations for NGC6395

NGC6426

NGC 6426 is a rather faint, type IX, globular cluster in Ophiuchus in the Herschel 400 list. Herschel found it on July 15, 1781. It is about 66,500 light-years from us and 46,300 light years from the center of the galaxy. That makes it a rather distant globular that we are looking at through the extent of our galaxy and its dust. One of my many imaging projects is to capture as many of the Herschel 400 objects I can from my latitude and limitations to the north due to my Polaris Trees. This is part of that project. Because it is seen through so much of our galaxy's dust it is reddened. I used a recent paper's estimate of reddening to adjust the color balance of the globular. I probably should have isolated the globular when doing this but applied the correction to the entire frame. This likely resulted in the field stars having a bit too much blue though since the reddening is not severe it didn't seem to hurt things too much. After adjustment, some blue stragglers showed up in this cluster. The paper indicated the cluster is one of the most metal poor in our galaxy and about 700 million years older than M92.
http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/bib_query?1999AJ....117.3059H

My notes from my Herschel 400 log from May 19th, 1985 reads: "10" F/5, good transparency, average seeing, 62x and 211x, medium size, very faint, somewhat brighter toward the middle. No resolution." From that, it appears to be a rather poor visual object. Another note from a different observation in which I used a 4" off-axis stop says "not seen".

NED shows only one galaxy in the image though I see a dozen or so. That one is near the bottom edge halfway between the center line and the right edge of the image. There's not even a magnitude estimate for it at NED.

14" LX 200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6426

NGC6470

This is a very confusing region of Draco. NGC galaxies are usually in right ascension order in any small field. Here they bounce all over the place. Catalogs vary is to which galaxy is which. I'm going with what the now not running NGC Project said when I researched this field years ago. I am attaching a map from their site I saved giving Dr. Corwin's research into which galaxy is which. The map, however, misses NGC 6456. It is the bright galaxy right of NGC 6463 too far west for his map to pick up.

It might appear that these galaxies are related but that isn't quite true. Only 4 of the 7 have any distance data, all from redshift measurements. Those with data are NGC 6453, and E/S0 galaxy and NGC 6463, an E2 galaxy are at 550 million light-years so likely related. NGC 6570 (sometimes called NGC 6172 in error says Dr. Corwin) an SBb galaxy is 65 million light-years away and NGC 6571, an Scd: edge on galaxy is at 370 million light-years. I have no data on the others. Not only is this a confusing field it is poorly studied it appears.

I took this early in my digital days before researching these to any extent but I had saved the NGC Project map before the site went mostly dark. I can add that all were discovered by Lewis Swift but on different nights. On June 9, 1886 he found NGC 6463. On September 25, 1886 he found NGC 6456, NGC 6471, NGC 6472 and NGC 6477. That leaves NGC 6463 for which we only know it was in 1886 and likely one of the two nights above but which, if either it is seems lost to history.

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

Related Designations for NGC6470

NGC6491

UGC 11007 is a mostly one-armed spiral in Draco. Its distance is unknown. While it shares the field with two NGC galaxies they appear far closer leaving the mystery of UGC 11007's odd shape unanswered. It is classed as simply as SB, no peculiar designation.

The two NGC galaxies are also interesting. NGC 6491 is classed as Sab. NED has two redshift measurements for it. The main one they prefer says it is about 240 million light-years distant while the other says 280 million light-years. As such measurements go this isn't a major difference at all. It is a very red spiral. I'd have suspected a bar with the elongated core and red color (red spirals tend to be barred). It has a blue plume of recent star formation that really stands out against the rather bland galaxy. Was that triggered by NGC 6493?

NED has only one redshift for NGC 6493 that puts it at about 268 million light-years, between the two for NGC 6491 but closer to the less accepted value. Again these differences could reflect random motion differences. It is classed SAB(r)cd. While blue it isn't as blue as many of its type. Its arm structure is rather nonsymmetric. This could be natural or possibly indicate interaction with some other galaxy in the past. Flip a coin. In any case, this is an interesting group.

NGC 6491 and NGC 6493 were discovered by Lewis Swift but on different nights. He found NGC 6491 on June 13, 1885 and NGC 6493 on June 5, 1885.

There's redshift data for only one other galaxy in the field. Draw a line from NGC 6493 through UGC 11007 and continue on a bit less than twice that distance and go up slightly. You come to VII Zw 747 described as a "blue large knotty disc compact". It is listed at about 525 million light-years distant so definitely unrelated to the NGC galaxies.

Another galaxy caught my eye. It is nearly directly above NGC 6491, two-thirds of the way to the top of my image. It looks like a comet with a short curving dust tail going up and to the right. At the end of the "dust tail" is a very faint galaxy (7 o'clock from an orange star). That faint, star-like galaxy is SDSS J175000.63+614047.9 at magnitude 21.6. I mention it only because the far brighter and larger comet-like galaxy isn't listed at NED at all! Yes, it is a galaxy as I found it on the POSS plates. These interesting but uncatalogued galaxies drive my brain nuts. Why are the far fainter ones listed but these odd ones are sometimes missing? There's another comet like galaxy in the image. This one is above and a bit left of UGC 11007 in the cropped and enlarged image. It too isn't in NED. They don't seem to like comet-like galaxies it would appear. Again some far fainter ones are listed.

Arp was fond of saying that all galaxies are peculiar if you look close enough. This field would seem to support that idea.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' R=3x10'x3 GB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6491

NGC6495

This field is in southeastern Hercules too close to the Zone of Avoidance for Sloan or other surveys that provide distance data to cover. It has 3 NGC galaxies; NGC 6495 (barely), NGC 6500 and NGC 6501. All are about 140 million light-years distant by redshift as is PGC 061102. Most sources consider NGC 6500 and NGC 6501 as interacting. NGC 6500 has a strong outflow according to most papers. That may be the cause of the faint eastern arm though I didn't find any confirmation of that. It could be just due to NGC 6501. Notice that while all agree quite well with similar redshift distance data their non-redshift distances are widely off for NGC 6500 and NGC 6501. NGC 6495 agrees nicely, however. I don't know why the difference.

This image was taken in the height of smoke from Canadian fires in Manitoba and British Columbia plus some from the California fires. The smoke wiped blue almost entirely, severely hurt green such that even with eXcalibrator color was awful. Seems the smoke was very different in density with some areas of even this small field hit hard and other areas not so much. The result was a super gaudy image with super reds and super blues depending on the smoke as Excalibrator matches the entire field not individual stars or locations. Trying to find color images of this field taken without smoke resulted in those made from DSS red and blue plates being way too blue to the one amateur color image I found from Japan showing the field as very red. Seligman has a photo taken from an uncredited source that is closer to what I suspect is correct. I tried to adjust my color to its colors by isolating many different areas and adjusting as needed. I normally totally avoid any color adjustment that isn't global but had to break a hard and fast rule (never broken before that I can recall) to get this to looks at all reasonable. Normally the background of my blue images is about 400 with green at about 410 and red at 420 but with the normal exposure blue was 102, green 112 and red 121. That's how hard it was hit by the smoke. Brighter regions were hit very differently than the background making this one a nightmare to process. After three days of struggle, I have given up and am going with this. Since the field isn't all that exciting I likely won't try again.

NGC 6495 was discovered by Albert Marth on May 11, 1864. NGC 6500 and NGC 6501 were discovered by William Herschel on June 29, 1799. Since most of his deep sky work was prior to 1790 this was one of his last finds though he continued rarely to 1802. He died August 25, 1822, doing mostly double star work after about 1802. Even that was intermittent. Why I don't know. If anyone does please let me know. Neither NGC 6500 or NGC6501 are in the Herschel observing programs. I left no comment as to why I imaged this field. Usually, I take these only because they are in one or the other of the observing programs. I put in on the list years ago at a low priority so it just now was taken, long after I forgot why.

Smoke is still a pain and even worse than when this was taken. Last night the cloud sensor and IR images showed no clouds with a great sky. Using the Telrad on the 14" I was able to point the scope at Vega and then barely see Vega. I'd not have found it otherwise. That's how thick the smoke was. Local hospitals are overrun with folk who never had breathing issues to the extent they can't begin to keep up a who is not in that field but all were pressed into service. Local pharmacy had about 50 waiting to get prescriptions. It doesn't bother me nor my wife but sure is most everyone else. We have air conditioning which is rather rare here so that may be the difference.

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

Rick

Related Designations for NGC6495

NGC6503

NGC 6503 is a nice flocculent galaxy in eastern Draco and thought to be about 17 million light-years distant based on HST images of its red giant stars. Most sources call it a dwarf though NED doesn't. Nor should it in my opinion. Most sources give its diameter at 30 million light-years. I find that quite wrong. That is the diameter of its brighter disk but the disk extends considerably further both directions in my data. I find it nearly 10 minutes of arc across which makes it 49,000 light-years across. The faint extensions appear full of fuzzy objects. Since the HST image doesn't begin to go out far enough I don't know what these may be. Likely star clusters I would think. Some may be globulars I suppose but they seem to be in the disk making that unlikely. This is a very active galaxy with an active core and many star-forming HII regions. It was discovered on July 22, 1854 by Georg Friedrich Julius Arthur von Auwers using a 6.2" telescope.

The galaxy is on the edge of the "Local Void". This is a very poorly defined region bounded by our local group, the Hercules Cluster and some say the Coma Cluster. I have trouble with the latter as that is about half a billion light-years out so not exactly "local". The size of the void is given as somewhat between 30 and more than 150 million light-years. I'd say that is rather vague and rather a rather useless description. The void is said to contain fewer galaxies than would be expected there but with such a poor boundary I'd think you could "prove" about any density you wanted by playing with such a vague volume.

Being above (barely) the 70-degree limit I had for years I was unable to catch it. I wanted to try and see those HII regions. Finally, after my two Polaris trees had to be removed before they fell on the house or observatory I got the data. But not the HII data I had apparently planned on. The result was it was removed from my to-do list but not added to the to-process list though the data files had been moved into that directory. Without going on the listing it sat there ignored. After a request was put out for the image some time ago I looked and saw the data was waiting to be processed but never noticed it wasn't in the queue to actually be processed. I mentioned I had the data but it would be a while before I got to it as I looked down the listing for two months and didn't see it. Finally, I wondered when I would get to it so looked down the full list and it wasn't there. So years late I finally made a rush to process the data even though there's no H alpha data. Apparently, I was planning on getting that but not putting it in the to-do queue at all let alone at a high priority that never happened. If the weather ever clears here I'll see if I can remedy that.

Also, I found the red data was poor. It got hit by clouds and hurt badly. That I noticed and I retook the data or tried to later that night after it cleared. But instead of taking red data I took blue! This one just wasn't meant to be. I struggled but think I sort of salvaged the color even with this handicap.

There's not much on this field. Some of the obvious galaxies are strong Ultraviolet emitters and were cataloged by the GALEX ultraviolet space telescope. Oddly NED picks them up only as UV sources of an unknown nature rather than as the galaxy they are. None have redshift data so I didn't note them on the annotated image. I did note all galaxies NED listed as galaxies, however. Since these are only known by their coordinates I didn't bother to identify them beyond their status as G for galaxy AGN for active galactic nucleus and Q for quasar. Somehow three from the 2MASS survey without distance info did get fully identified. Why I don't know. I'm dead tired after two hard days splitting many cords of super heavy oak. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. I'm too old to be lifting 100 lb. hunks onto a splitter. I need one with a hydraulic lift. Some are over 30" across.

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

RickNGC 6503 is a nice flocculent galaxy in eastern Draco and thought to be about 17 million light-years distant based on HST images of its red giant stars. Most sources call it a dwarf though NED doesn't. Nor should it in my opinion. Most sources give its diameter at 30 million light-years. I find that quite wrong. That is the diameter of its brighter disk but the disk extends considerably further both directions in my data. I find it nearly 10 minutes of arc across which makes it 49,000 light-years across. The faint extensions appear full of fuzzy objects. Since the HST image doesn't begin to go out far enough I don't know what these may be. Likely star clusters I would think. Some may be globulars I suppose but they seem to be in the disk making that unlikely. This is a very active galaxy with an active core and many star-forming HII regions. It was discovered on July 22, 1854 by Georg Friedrich Julius Arthur von Auwers using a 6.2" telescope.

The galaxy is on the edge of the "Local Void". This is a very poorly defined region bounded by our local group, the Hercules Cluster and some say the Coma Cluster. I have trouble with the latter as that is about half a billion light-years out so not exactly "local". The size of the void is given as somewhat between 30 and more than 150 million light-years. I'd say that is rather vague and rather a rather useless description. The void is said to contain fewer galaxies than would be expected there but with such a poor boundary I'd think you could "prove" about any density you wanted by playing with such a vague volume.

Being above (barely) the 70-degree limit I had for years I was unable to catch it. I wanted to try and see those HII regions. Finally, after my two Polaris trees had to be removed before they fell on the house or observatory I got the data. But not the HII data I had apparently planned on. The result was it was removed from my to-do list but not added to the to-process list though the data files had been moved into that directory. Without going on the listing it sat there ignored. After a request was put out for the image some time ago I looked and saw the data was waiting to be processed but never noticed it wasn't in the queue to actually be processed. I mentioned I had the data but it would be a while before I got to it as I looked down the listing for two months and didn't see it. Finally, I wondered when I would get to it so looked down the full list and it wasn't there. So years late I finally made a rush to process the data even though there's no H alpha data. Apparently, I was planning on getting that but not putting it in the to-do queue at all let alone at a high priority that never happened. If the weather ever clears here I'll see if I can remedy that.

Also, I found the red data was poor. It got hit by clouds and hurt badly. That I noticed and I retook the data or tried to later that night after it cleared. But instead of taking red data I took blue! This one just wasn't meant to be. I struggled but think I sort of salvaged the color even with this handicap.

There's not much on this field. Some of the obvious galaxies are strong Ultraviolet emitters and were cataloged by the GALEX ultraviolet space telescope. Oddly NED picks them up only as UV sources of an unknown nature rather than as the galaxy they are. None have redshift data so I didn't note them on the annotated image. I did note all galaxies NED listed as galaxies, however. Since these are only known by their coordinates I didn't bother to identify them beyond their status as G for galaxy AGN for active galactic nucleus and Q for quasar. Somehow three from the 2MASS survey without distance info did get fully identified. Why I don't know. I'm dead tired after two hard days splitting many cords of super heavy oak. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. I'm too old to be lifting 100 lb. hunks onto a splitter. I need one with a hydraulic lift. Some are over 30" across.

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

Rick

Related Designations for NGC6503

NGC6504

This is another early image when I wasn't writing much on the image or researching it. Below is what little I did have to say about it on a small list of friends I sent it to. I'll just add that it was discovered by Albert Marth on July 27, 1864. NED classifies it as S while Seligman says S??. It is located in Hercules.

Do you believe in flying saucers? No? Are you sure? Years ago this lake was listed in a highly touted book as one of the top 100 walleye lakes in Minnesota. Problem is they are as elusive as flying saucers. You meet folks whose neighbor knows a guy whose wife's brother caught one. I always said I'd believe in flying saucers when one landed in my yard and I'd believe in Mantrap walleye when I caught one. Then about 20 years ago I did catch one, one in 60 years of fishing this lake! Still, I now check my yard for flying saucers now and then. Seems the other night I caught one. At least it sure looks like one.

It's a bit too large to land in my backyard as it is a bit over 100,000 light-years across. Nor is it unidentified, being well known as NGC 6504, a galaxy a bit over 200 million light years from us and about the same size as our galaxy. So now I've seen something that looks like a flying saucer from my yard. It can be seen from any yard in the northern hemisphere and some in the southern as it is "flying" through the constellation of Hercules. There may even be aliens in the image. If so they are a bit below my resolution level!

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=1x10'X3, STL=11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC6504