NGC 672/UGC 1256 (north left of center) and IC 1727/UGC 1249 are an interesting, nearby, pair of galaxies in Triangulum. The red-shift distances are highly unreliable saying they are only 7 and 3 million light-years away respectively. This can't be true. Other distance measurements at NED put the distance to NGC 672 in the range of 23 to 32 million light-years and that of IC 1724 between 21 and 23 million light-years. Adam Block while at NOAO put the distance to both at 18 million light-years which is the distance cited in the paper quoted below though it gives 15 million light-years for IC 1727. Most sources consider them as interacting so the true distance to both should be close to the same. Radio measurements show the HI clouds around these two galaxies to be contiguous, not just overlapping. I found this interesting note at NED:
"UGC 1256 In this SB(s)cd spiral companion of UGC 1249, the HII regions are arranged along a bar in the inner parts and seem to draw a weak spiral structure around it. For this late type galaxy, no clear nucleus can be seen on the continuum map which shows several knots in the central part. The rotation curve, like that of its neighbor UGC 1249, is irregular, notably in the inner parts where it shows a counter-rotation motion. Indeed, one can see an inversion of the sign of the velocities within 20 arcsec of the center, corresponding to two HII regions (that surrounded by the isovelocity 420 and that on its right), with a symmetric behaviour for both sides of the rotation curve. The center of rotation has been chosen in order to have the two sides of the rotation curve symmetrical, but we want to underline the fact that this peculiar motion of counter-rotation persists if we choose another knot as the center, showing that this motion is real. The curve begins to be fairly symmetric beyond 100 arcsec (3.9 kpc), seeming to reach a plateau around 80 km s^-1^. However, according to the HI data, the plateau could be around 120 km s^-1^. Unlike what Carozzi-Meysonnier (1982) claimed (namely that UGC 1256 was less affected by the interaction according to optical studies), it is hard to estimate which galaxy is the more perturbed. Concerning its content in atomic hydrogen, the WHISP data show that its column density is very high in the optical disk (more than 20 x 10^20^ atoms cm^-2^), and that there is an extension of neutral gas to the north of the galaxy, which could be a tidal tail due to the interaction."
NGC 672 was discovered by William Herschel on October 26, 1786. It is in the second H400 observing program. Unfortunately my log for that never made the move to Minnesota for some reason.
For IC 1727 it says:
"This SB(s)m galaxy exhibits an asymmetric structure on the DSS image also observed on the Ha emission, which is mainly localized in what looks like a central bar and on the north-west side, suggesting a distorted spiral arm. No clear nucleus was detected on the continuum map and the center of rotation was chosen in order to derive the most regular and symmetric rotation curve possible. This rotation curve is quite chaotic but it seems that (from the approaching side) we reach a plateau at 70 km s-1 beyond 130 arcsec (2.8 kpc). About 9 arcmin to the north-east, UGC 1249 has a companion, UGC 1256, with which it seems to be interacting. Indeed, on the HI map derived by WHISP, one can see that their HI disks are contiguous and their velocity fields are regular and show a continuity in the isovelocity lines. The amplitude of the HI velocity field is in agreement with that derived by GHASP, confirming that we reach a plateau on the approaching side. "
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/bib_query?2003A%26A...399...51G
IC 1727 was discovered by Isaac Roberts on November 29, 1896.
Only three other galaxies in the frame have redshift data and one of those is nearly off the frame. The pair of galaxies along the north edge toward the left corner are CGCG 482-017 at about 480 million light-years. The remaining galaxy is also at 480 million light-years. It is very small and faint. For those who want to track it down it is at pixel 123x954 near the left edge below center. The only "bright" galaxy in the image beside NGC 672 and IC 1727 is LEDA 1803573. It is the orange spindle just east (left) of the south end of IC 1727. NED had no redshift data for it. It is obviously a background galaxy.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME Related Designations for NGC672NGC 0672, UGC 01256, VV 338b, KUG 0144+271 NED02, CGCG 482-016, CGCG 0145.0+2711, MCG +04-05-011, 2MFGC 01346, 2MASX J01475452+2725580, 2MASXi J0147535+272559, 2MASS J01475449+2725579, IRAS 01450+2710, IRAS F01450+2710, KTG 08B, KPG 040B, LDCE 0160 NED002, HOLM 046A, NSA 169779, PGC 006595, UZC J014754.3+272559, 11HUGS 034, NVSS J014756+272617, ALFALFA 2-169, HI J014753.9+272555, [M98j] 026 NED02, IC 1727, UGC 01249, VV 338a, KUG 0144+271 NED01, CGCG 482-014, CGCG 0144.6+2705, MCG +04-05-009, LCSB L0071O, 2MASX J01472988+2720000, 2MASXi J0147306+271952, IRAS 01446+2705, IRAS F01446+2704, KTG 08A, KPG 040A, ADBS J014729+2719, HOLM 046B, NSA 130396, PGC 006574, SSTSL2 J014729.89+272002.1, UZC J014731.3+271939, 11HUGS 033, ALFALFA 2-168, HI J014729.9+271958, [M98j] 026 NED01, NGC672, IC1727, | 
NGC672L4X10RGB2X10X3R.JPG
| NGC 6742 is a small planetary in Draco. It's also what you image when you key in the wrong NGC number before you go to bed. Turned out to be somewhat interesting anyway, just not what I intended. Though I can't find much on it. It has some interesting internal detail. The night was good so I should have been at 1x1 binning but I suppose I should be grateful I got anything considering my slip up when entering the target numbers. I've not even recorded it in my viewing log so doubt I've looked at it visually. So faint I doubt any of the detail is visible in my 10" visually. The central star is about 20th magnitude or fainter so certainly wouldn't be seen. The star on the west edge measures out at 15th magnitude and thus would be a challenge in that scope as well. It was discovered by William Herschel on July 8, 1788. It isn't in either H400 program.
There's a small fuzz patch right next to its northeastern limb. Is it part of the nebula or an anonymous background galaxy? Probably the latter. There are dozens of faint background galaxies in the image if you go looking for them. I couldn't locate any distance data for NGC 6742.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
NGC6742L4X10RGB2X10R-CROP150.jpg
NGC6742L4X10RGB2X10R.jpg
| NGC 6745 in Lyra was the first really strange galaxy I imaged back in 2007. I need to retake it as my imaging skills weren't up to the task. This one is the result of a two galaxy collision. The galaxies likely aren't going to merge. The little one to the north is fleeing the scene too rapidly to return. It was discovered by Édouard Stephan on July 24, 1879. While there are only two galaxies here, the main one and the little bullet that caused the damage, catalogs show three objects. As a result of the collision, a mass of new stars was formed about 10 million years ago. While the most massive have already lived and died in that "short" time many are still there. They are the blue northern tip of the lower galaxy and that carries its own PGC designation, PGC 200362 while the colliding galaxy to the north is PGC 200361 though the entire mess is NGC 6745.
You can see a picture of the main galaxy and the blue stars as taken by the Hubble Space Telescope at https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo0034a/ Only a small piece of the colliding galaxy is seen. Their image has south at the top while I put north at the top. A write-up of the image is at http://heritage.stsci.edu/2000/34/supplemental.html
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME Related Designations for NGC6745NGC 6745, UGC 11391, CGCG 229-013, CGCG 1900.0+4041, IRAS 19000+4040, IRAS F19000+4040, KTG 69, PGC 062691, UZC J190141.6+404444, 87GB 190004.4+404038, NGC6745, | 
NGC6745LUM4X10RGB1X10.jpg
| NGC 6749 is another golden globular cluster (maybe) in Aquila that is seen through a lot of galactic dust that is dimming it by up to 4.5 magnitudes. Most consider it the most difficult NGC listed globular star cluster north of the celestial equator and second only to NGC 6830 at -39 degrees. It was discovered by John Herschel in 1827 with his 18.7" reflector. He described it as consisting of large and small stars. This is odd because I find no reports of any stars being seen it in with a modern 17" scope. But he also says it fills the field with stars. Considering it is only 3 minutes of arc across at most in a modern 17" scope it sounds like he was seeing field stars rather than actual members of the cluster.
It is also cataloged as Berkeley 42, an open star cluster. WEBDA just notes "May be a globular cluster." All other modern sources are confident it is a globular. I do find WEBDA's data conflicting with most other sources. For instance, they put it at 6000 light years from us while most other sources say 25,800 light-years, over 4 times more distant. WEBDA also gives it an age of 2.1 billion years. Old for an open cluster but too young for any other known globular cluster. They do have it cataloged as Berkeley 42 open cluster, not its NGC designation. SEDS gives it a size of 5.2 arc minutes. That would make it only 9 light-years across. Again, that doesn't fit a globular cluster. But at 25,800 it would be 39 light-years. Still small for a globular but considering the 4.5 magnitudes of extinction it is likely much larger than the 5.2 minutes cited. The long dimension, mostly north to south, in my image, is about 3.5 minutes across.
The Sky and others seem to list the position of Berkeley 42 a few minutes west and a bit south of the position for 6749. Sufficiently far that even the outer edges of NGC 6749 doesn't overlap the center position given for Berkeley 42. The Sky lists the two separately. Giving the position of NGC 6749 correctly and showing Berkeley 42 as being 2.6 minutes away at position angle 245 degrees. That would put it near the blue star at about 3:30 and one cluster diameter away. I see no cluster in the area other than the obvious one. Also in researching this, I found a paper, http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0410325.pdf , from a Chinese Observatory that does consider it an open cluster with an age of 6 billion years. They make no mention it might be a globular cluster. I'd think that important. Maybe not. In all, I'm left "Lost in Space" without a robot to help me. Well not totally lost. The golden color is a good clue it likely is quite distant. That plus its size and star concentration heavily favor the globular cluster side as far as I'm concerned.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10' (hurt by clouds), STL-11000XM, Paramount ME. | 
NGC6749L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
| NGC 6755 is an open star cluster in Aquila that is about 4600 light years distant. To me, it is the Mitosis Cluster. When I first saw it when doing the first Herschel 400 in the early 80's in my 10" f/5 my impression was that it was a cluster in the process of splitting into two clusters. I was rather surprised to see that same impression in this image of it. A pair of linear "stretch marks" on the west (right) side seem to indicate it is about to split. Just a bit further west is an odd narrow vertical band of stars in a wave pattern that seems to hold its width along the entire west side of the cluster furthering the impression. Or my mind is just set on seeing mitosis no matter what.
It was discovered by William Herschel on July 30, 1785. My entry from May 31, 1985 on a good night at up to 120x reads; "A rather large cluster of faint stars with a rather small core of mostly 13th magnitude and fainter stars. There is a scattering of 25 or so brighter stars over a larger area. At 65x only the scattered stars were seen, Located in a rich area of the Milky Way so its edges are not well defined." My image fits my initial "mitosis" impression I don't see that core of faint stars I mention.
There's a nice dark nebula in the lower left corner. I couldn't find it in SIMBAD. Guess it isn't big enough for cataloging or there are just so many in the Milky Way catalogs have to stop somewhere and it didn't make the cut.
Seeing was poor the night I took this. Clusters need a very good night or look mushy. So I need to redo it. To help hide the seeing I reduced the image from my native 1" per pixel to 1.5" per pixel. With clusters that loss of resolution isn't significant. The entire image now fits on most of today's modern monitors at that scale which helps with large clusters like this one. The image was taken September 20, 2009 UTC.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=1x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
NGC6755L4X10RGB1X10X3-1D5.jpg
| NGC 6756 is an open star cluster in Aquila. WEBDA puts it at just under 5,000 light-years distant. They put its age at about 62 million years. That young I expected it to be very blue but it wasn't very blue at all. That bothered me until I read it is severely obscured by dust that is reddening it by 1.18 magnitudes. That certainly explains why the stars weren't all that blue.
The cluster was discovered by William Herschel on August 21, 1781 is included in the first Herschel 400 observing list. He classified it as Class VII (Compressed Cluster of Small and Large Stars). My observation of it from May 21, 1985 with my 10" f/5 reads: "Small, very tight cluster that's not well resolved as only 5 stars were seen against its face. Rest of the cluster looked grainy much as a globular cluster on the verge of resolution looks. In fact, it could be easily mistaken for a globular." It appears the reddening also hurts the brightness of the stars adding to its poor visual appearance, at least for an open cluster. Sure doesn't look globular like in my image of it. I found little on it and can't say if the orange stars seen in it are members of the cluster or just Milky Way stars.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
NGC6756L4X10RGB2X10R.JPG
| NGC 6760 it a rarely imaged type IX globular cluster in Aquila about 24,100 light-years from us and 15,600 from the galactic center. It was discovered on March 30, 1845 by John Hind. The cluster's integrated spectral type is G5 so it is slightly yellow but reddening from looking through the disk of the galaxy has turned it much redder than it really is. Half the mass of the cluster lies within 1.27 minutes of its center though stars can go out nearly 13 minutes before tidal forces of the galaxy will rip them away. That would be more than halfway to the edges of the long dimension of my image. For such a nice globular it is surprisingly unknown. It is about magnitude 8.9 visually further adding to the mystery of its obscurity. In fact, checking my visual logs it appears I've ignored it like everyone else. I find no entry for it.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=1x10' (clouds nailed color data), STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
NGC6760L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
| NGC 6764 is a barred spiral in Cygnus only a couple minutes of arc from the border with Draco. It is about 100 million light-years distant by both redshift and the median of Tully-Fisher measurements at NED. That makes the galaxy about 86,000 light-years in diameter. NED classifies it as SB(s)bc;LINER Sy2, The NGC Project says SBb while Seligman says SBbc?. Reading a few papers on it some say it is a LINER galaxy, others say it is a Seyfert 2 galaxy, Some say it is both and some say neither. NED says both. Nearly all agree that the spectrum shows a lot of lines normally associated with Wolf Rayet stars, especially in the bar. They also say there's strong HII in the bar though I didn't pick that up. The galaxy was discovered by Lewis Swift on July 4, 1885. Too bad I didn't pick up the HII as if I had it might have been the "real" fireworks galaxy with that discovery date.
This part of the sky is in the Zone of Avoidance so there's little on it. Only two galaxies have any redshift data. The spiral toward the upper right corner is PGC 2387415 with a redshift distance of 480 million light-years. It is about 80,000 light-years in diameter The edge on spiral at the far left level with NGC 6764 is LEDA 2384950 at a distance of 580 million light-years. Look closely and you'll see it has a faint extension to the left as if it is a plume. This gives it a rather large size of nearly 200,000 light-years. Leave off the faint plumes and it is half that size. While there are many other interesting looking galaxies in the frame none have redshift data at NED. For that reason, I didn't prepare an annotated image.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME Related Designations for NGC6764NGC 6764, UGC 11407, CGCG 256-007, CGCG 1907.0+5050, MCG +08-35-003, 2MFGC 14754, 2MASX J19081634+5055591, 2MASS J19081638+5055593, IRAS 19070+5051, IRAS F19070+5051, AKARI J1908167+505559, ISOSS 094, ISOSS J19083+5055, LQAC 287+050 001, PGC 062806, UZC J190816.5+505600, 87GB 190701.2+505130, 87GB[BWE91] 1907+5051, [WB92] 1907+5051, NVSS J190816+505559, 6C B190703.2+505101, TXS 1907+508, CXO J190816.3+505558, 1RXS J190815.4+505553, [dML87] 711, [VCV2001] J190816.4+505559, [SLK2004] 1528, NGC 6764:[LB2005] X01, [VCV2006] J190816.4+505559, NGC6764, | 
NGC6764L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
NGC6764L4X10RGB2X10CROP125.JPG
| NGC 6765 is one of Lyra's "other" planetary nebulae. It has many of them. While some planetary nebula looks similar to the blue-green ball of Neptune, hence their horribly wrong name many have very strange shapes. This is one of them. It is located 1.2 degrees northwest of M56. I found many distance measurements for it. A recent distance would be about 5000 light-years. That gives it a rather large diameter of about 2 light-years. It is considered to be in the early stages of interacting with the InterStellar Medium. For early stage, it sure looks messed up to me.
I believe its central star is the star just north of the tiny H alpha pink spot near its center. When that spot appeared I thought I had a glitch in my data but I've found a couple high-resolution images of this planetary that show it to be real. Strange but real. While I said H alpha it could well be NII emission or a combination. Someone with 3nm Ha and NII filters could answer this question but I don't have either and this is a pure LRGB image. It was discovered by Albert Marth on June 28, 1864.
If you look closely you'll see quite a few background galaxies, about 17 are listed in NED but some have coordinates with an error bar so large it is hard to pin them down. None listed in NED have even a magnitude let alone a distance estimate. Those with good coordinates come from the 2MASS catalog so miss those without strong 2 micron emission, that's most of them though most of the brightest and largest did make that catalog. Without any useful data and names that only are their coordinates and the vast number of stars making labels hard to read I didn't bother with an annotated image this time.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
NGC6765L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
NGC6765L4X10RGB2X10CROP125.JPG
| NGC 6772 is one of many planetary nebulae in Aquila. It is one of the better ones, at least photographically speaking. It was discovered by William Herschel on July 21, 1784. It is in the second H400 program. Unfortunately, my notes from that got lost in my move up here so I have no visual impression of it. Its parallelogram shape is rather unusual. It might be due to interaction with the interstellar medium but I didn't find anything on it. In fact, I found very little on it, not even a distance estimate.
This was a very early image of mine, even before I did any research. In fact, while I processed it, it was then lost on the hard drive for 11 years before I found it working on these pages.
14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10, RGB=1x10, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME | 
NGC6772L4X10rgb1x10.jpg
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