UGC08584

UGC 8584 is a triple galaxy about 810 million light-years away. It is in Virgo, 10.5 degrees north of Spica so a bit low for good resolution at my latitude. The three are labeled 8584A, 8584B and 8584C north to south. To the west of C is another something. Is it a fourth member, a plume or a separate galaxy. I lean toward it being an unrelated galaxy though with its apparent off-center core I'm unsure of this. NED gives it its own entry which I've put on the annotated image, SDSS J133613.40-010229.8. Without any redshift data, its relation to the others is hard to determine. I found no mention of it in what few references to this trio I looked at.

The northern galaxy, NGC 8584A or NED01 in NED terms is PGC 048009 and is classified as Sc(f) HII. The (f) for it being flat. It appears in two parts a red part to the north and a blue segment to the south. The middle galaxy 8584B or NED02 is classified as E? pec HII. It is also listed as GNA 010. The southern one, also listed as [FNO2007] 1528 is classified simply as Sb HII. Odd considering the long plume coming off its south arm and other distortions that may or may not include SDSS J133613.40-010229.8. I started to include all this in the annotated image but things got so messy I gave up so am listing it here. The chain is about 400 million light-years long by my measurement including the southern plume from UGC 8584C.

Being 8 degrees north of the ecliptic I rather expected asteroids. There are four in the image. Only one is named. Its naming citation reads:

"(121479) Hendershot = 1999 TM236
James Hendershot (b. 1957) is the Payload Team Instrument Manager at Goddard Space Flight Center for the OCAMS and OTES instruments on the OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission. He also worked on the James Webb
Space Telescope, GOES-R, EOS Aura Observatory and the Space Exploration Initiative."

One asteroid 175620 passed in front of a distant galaxy. The galaxy is brighter than the asteroid so it appears the asteroid goes behind the galaxy rather than in front of it. An interesting illusion.

As a reminder of my shorthand CQ is for Candidate Quasar. NELG is Narrow Emission Line Galaxy and UvES is for Ultraviolet Excess Source which is a candidate quasar whose distance is determined photometrically. Some stars can mimic great redshift when measured this way so these are a bit questionable. I've tried to include only those I think are likely quasars, same as with Candidate Quasars.

The weather here has been iffy so I've saved green to last as I can compensate for green being weak. In this case, clouds hurt the one green frame I did get and blocked my attempt at the second. With no satellite issue, I told the system not to reshoot the green. I don't think color suffered due to this.

14" LX 200R @ f/10, L=4x10 RB=2x10' G=1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for UGC08584

UGC09002

UGC 9002 is a strange galaxy in southeast Bootes about 200 million light-years. Technically the UGC considers this a pair of galaxies though most papers refer to the northern galaxy as UGC 9002 and the southern by any of several designations. It does appear they are interacting. I'm going to consider the northern galaxy as UGC 9002 and the southern as MCG +02-36-035. NED classes UGC 9002 as a possible barred spiral. A note at NED says of this pair: "A complex late-type galaxy paired with an SB0. The late-type shows chaotic barred and spiral structure, suggesting that it may be a spiral galaxy that was disrupted in an extreme encounter/collision. The DIS interaction class also extends to the SB0, where faint outer extensions are seen on broadband images. The bar of the late-type member exhibits no H{alpha} emission consistent with the interpretation of this galaxy as a spiral, rather than an irregular of some kind. H{alpha} regions of modest intensity are spread throughout the spiral arms, with the strongest emission from the region between the two components. The SB0 shows a strong H II-class emission spectrum." I also found it listed in a paper on polar ring galaxies. The paper is behind a paywall so I don't know if it considers it a polar ring galaxy or not. My first impression was that of a polar ring but it could be a disrupted barred spiral as the note above indicates. In any case, it is a mess!

It reminds me of the much closer and therefore apparently larger Spider Galaxy UGC 5829 that's also a disrupted blue galaxy.

The field contains another rather interesting barred spiral galaxy, MRK 0804. It is considered a starburst galaxy by some though that wasn't listed in NED's classification but was noted in its morphology. Usually, the two agree. Located at a redshift look back time of 260 million years it probably isn't related to UGC 9002. Its eastern arm is only slightly lumpy but the western one has several obvious bright star clouds. The northernmost one is listed as a separate galaxy with a redshift similar to that of MRK 0804 so I think it just a star cloud like the others in that arm. In fact looking at the PSF I think I see several condensations within it that don't show in the processed image. It may be a line of smaller star clouds.

The rest of the field is rather typical. Details are in the annotated image which lists all with a redshift at NED.

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

Related Designations for UGC09002

UGC09128

UGC 9128 is faint, low surface brightness, nearby, very blue, irregular galaxy of the Magellanic type located in Bootes. Its distance is rather hard to pin down. Redshift puts it at 17 million light-years. Tip of the red branch measurements says 8 to 9 million light-years. Other methods range from 5.5 to 24 million light-years. Throw out the extremes and average the remaining gives about 8 million light-years. While uncertain it does agree rather well the tip of the red branch method which tends to be rather accurate in galaxies like this one. That would make it very small at 3,800 light-years across.

The only striking feature of the galaxy is its extreme blue color. I abhor processing the color of an object in my image differently than others. If a galaxy seems to be too red, too blue has little color difference between the core and spiral arms etc., I leave it that way rather than push its color to fit the "norm". In this case, I made an exception. When I processed it the same as the rest of the field the blue was neon blue, even indigo, to the extreme. I selected the galaxy and reduced the color saturation by one half! It is still bluer than most any galaxy I've imaged but toning it down further would just be too much for my image processing philosophy. I don't like the reduction I made but it looked just horribly blue/indigo until I did. Oddly I find nothing in what few words have been written on this galaxy that mentions this extreme blue color. Otherwise, it is a rather featureless blob with a hint of some structure at the southwest end which seems a bit less blue than most of the galaxy. I would think the blue color indicates massive star formation recently that completely overwhelms the old stars that used to define the galaxy. I doubt it has any significant amount of dust and gas left for future star formation. What triggered this star formation appears to be unknown. It doesn't appear due to interaction with another galaxy as it isn't at all distorted for its type of galaxy nor is any other galaxy nearby (within 2 degrees) that is even close to this distance from us. It is a pretty lonely little galaxy. Is it just sad (blue) from being so lonely?

There are two pairs of obviously interacting galaxies to the northwest and southeast of UGC 9128. Both show plumes from interaction. Redshift is available for only one member of each pair but it appears obvious they are at the same distance and interacting.

There are several galaxy clusters in the image. When the bright cluster galaxy had no redshift listed that is noted with "na" for its distance. When it is the same as that for the cluster no separate distance is listed. If different then the galaxy's distance is listed after that for the cluster.

Another reason for catching this field is that it has a galaxy from the Flat Galaxy Catalog, #1737 that is just slightly tilted from being edge on. The tilt is enough that some hints of detail can be seen yet show it has no appreciable central bulge. Some theories say the size of the bulge indicates the size of the supermassive black hole in its core. If true this one must have a quite small supper massive black hole. Can galaxies suffer black hole envy?

The most interesting cluster is located to the northeast of UGC 9128 at the top of my image. It is rather close at 1.75 million light-years and quite large. Some of its members appear to be scattered across my image including one just north of UGC 9128. Many of its members are visible mainly in IR light and too faint to be seen in my image. While my limiting magnitude is 22 and these galaxies are as bright as 18.1 in IR light they don't show at all in my deep red insensitive camera.

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

Related Designations for UGC09128

UGC09240

UGC 9240/DDO 190 is an irregular dwarf galaxy in Bootes. It is a nearby galaxy being only some 9 billion light-years distant and easily resolved into stars by the Hubble Space Telescope as well as ground-based scopes. I'd hoped to get some resolution but my seeing just wasn't up to it thanks to my lousy weather for most of 2013. I'll save my fingers by referring to the article on it at the Hubble/ESA website: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1233a/ .

The other dwarf galaxy, DDO 187, mentioned in the HST article is one I've imaged under the UGC 09128 designation, again on a poor night.

There are a lot of faint fuzzies in the background but most didn't have redshift data. All that did are listed on the annotated image.

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

Related Designations for UGC09240

UGC09521

UGC 9521 and UGC 9523 anchor the WBL 524 galaxy cluster located about 410 million light-years from us in the southeast corner of Bootes. NED lists the cluster as population class 3 but I can't find how that translates into either size or number. Unless this is like richness class of Abell galaxy clusters, in which case it means it has 130 to 199 galaxies. In any case galaxies at that distance cover much of the field though they tend to be west of these two galaxies.

UGC 9521 was my primary target since it is a very odd spiral. Along its eastern edge, there's an apparent straight line feature that starts from a couple star clouds and ends at a larger, ill-defined star "blob" at the southern end. Is this the path of something it digested? I found nothing on either of these UGC galaxies so it is still a mystery. Seen at higher resolution in the Sloan survey image it appears this may be a one arm spiral unless this odd feature is the second arm. UGC 9521 is a very large barred spiral some 130,000 light-years in diameter by my measurement, including that southern "blob" as being part of the galaxy.

Northwest of UGC 9523 is a small, in angular size, blue galaxy that is listed in NED as an Ultraviolet Source rather than a galaxy. It was discovered by the Galex UV orbiting telescope. Why NED didn't pick it up as a Sloan Survey galaxy I don't know but it only appears as a Galex catalog object. Even stranger is the small, again in angular size, red elliptical like galaxy to the east of UGC 9523. That isn't listed in NED at all even though over a thousand galaxies are at least listed at NED that are in my image. The vast majority far smaller in angular size and much fainter. How these are missed I don't know but I find it happens all the time.

All galaxies and quasars with redshifts at NED are annotated. I didn't list seven quasar candidates that NED considers most likely stars with mistaken photographic redshift determinations. Over time I've seen many such candidates rejected when spectroscopic redshifts were obtained. None have verified so with that poor track record I no longer include these in my annotated images.

One short asteroid trail appears in the upper left quadrant.

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

Related Designations for UGC09521

UGC09560

UGC 9560 and UGC 9562 are a pair of widely separated apparently interacting galaxies in the "kite" of Bootes. At least something has left these two in a very strange way. They are about 65 million light-years away by redshift and 75 million by other measurements. While I can't get into Arp's mind I have to think he'd have included this pair if he had known about them. Many in his atlas are far more normal looking than this pair!

UGC 9560 has a very blue core, a warped disk and jets. The one going west-southwest above the warped disk is most obvious. While the core is blue the disk is rather white. Somewhat the reverse you normally see. There's a lot of hot new stars in its well-defined core. One paper describes it this way: "This object presents very elongated outer isophotes and a conspicuous central star-forming region. Orthogonally to the major axis, on opposite sides, we see two jetlike structures." Besides its peculiar designation, it is a BCDG with HII emission from that blue core. BCDG stands for "Blue Compact Disk Galaxy". It certainly is as it is only about 17,500 light-years across assuming the closer distance and 20,000 at the further distance estimate.

UGC 9562 is even stranger looking. It is classed as peculiar with HII emission. In this case, the HII comes from the odd blue structures. Ignore those and it looks like a simple S0 galaxy. Most references refer to the blue knots as knots in jets. If jets, they do seem to arise from its core. They look like they form a ring around the galaxy though if that were the case I'd think we'd see them right through a rather dust free galaxy. I found nothing explaining this very strange feature. It's normal looking disk stretches about 18,000 light years at the closer distance and 21,000 if the more distant estimate is used. Again quite small. The blue knots extend a slightly lesser distance, 17,500 light-years or 20,000 at the further distance, the same as UGC 9560. The projected separation from UGC 9560 is only 76,500 light-years or 88,000 light-years depending on distance. Less than the diameter of our galaxy. So while they are of low mass there may still be some interaction going on. Still, this is the least distance that could separate them. We don't know the separation in three-dimensional space so it could be much greater.

I was also drawn to this region for its abundance of galaxy clusters. Unfortunately, the poor transparency and not great seeing we've had much of the past 18+ months meant I couldn't go as deep as I wanted so the clusters don't show nearly as well as they would have under normal conditions. I'll just refer you to the annotated image.

It's time to repeat my abbreviations on annotated images involving galaxy clusters. Most will be labeled GC/G meaning both the cluster and its anchoring Bright Cluster Galaxy have virtually the same coordinates so I've used one label for both. I show the number of galaxies NED has for the cluster and its diameter if available (none had that information this time). The distance to the cluster is listed first. A "p" means it was determined photographically rather than spectroscopically. One is labeled "e" as it is an estimate. If the galaxy's distance is the same and determined the same way it is omitted. If different it will be shown. If there's no distance given for the galaxy then "na" is used for not available. GC without /G is used when the cluster has no BCG. In such cases, a line will be drawn to the approximate position. NED usually states the cluster's position to +/- 15" of arc so I have to be approximate in such cases. Otherwise, I'll use the BCG and put the label immediately to its right. If that's not possible as the label would cover up members of the cluster or overlap a previous label or be hard to read due to passing over a bright star, a line will go from the label to the BCG.

More quasars than usual are also found in the image. Since light travel time distances I use are rather meaningless at their great distance I also include the z value. This is a measure of how much the frequency of the light has been stretched to longer wavelengths. A z of 1 means the wavelength has doubled so all the light we are seeing was emitted in the ultra-violet part of the spectrum. A z=2 means the wavelength as tripled etc. The relationship of z to light travel time distance is not linear so at high z values, a large change in z can result in a rather small increase in light travel time. The z value would hit infinity at the time of the big bang so it must rise rapidly as the look back time approaches this value, ~13.7 billion years.

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

Related Designations for UGC09560

UGC09764

UGC 9764 aka PGC 54150 is a low surface brightness barred spiral. NED classifies it as SB(s)dm. Its arms seem to just fade away with traces going quite far east and west. Its distance seems as obscure as its size. Redshift puts it a bit over 100 million light-years away while Tully-Fisher says 120 to 320 million light-years. A rather large range. Using the closest distance it is still 92,000 light-years across measuring the obvious portion of the galaxy. Faint outer parts make it some 120,000 light-years or even larger. Considering this would make it over 300,000 light-years using the larger (and more modern) measurements I have to go with the closer distance and thus more reasonable size. It is located in Draco just under Ursa Minor.

Being so far north there's little research on this field. Only CGCG 318-023 in the lower left corner has a redshift value at NED. That puts it some 620 million light-years distant. That makes it a huge elliptical like galaxy with a diameter of about 200,000 light-years. I say elliptical like as I couldn't find any classification for it. While the Sloan survey covers the very left side of the image it has no redshift information and omits the brighter galaxies for some reason. Two candidate galaxy clusters are listed at NED but their position is vague and I find nothing at their position. With so little information I didn't prepare an annotated image.

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

Related Designations for UGC09764

UGC09829

As those who have followed me for some time know, I love peculiar galaxies. The more peculiar the better. Arp compiled an atlas of 338 of them in the mid-1960's when they were poorly understood. But there are far more strange ones he didn't include. Many as peculiar or more so than those he put in his atlas. This is one of my favorites. Something seemed to prevent me from catching it for some time but finally, I was able to bag it after all these years. Why such a strange object isn't better known I don't know.

UGC 9829, located in the southwest corner of Serpens Caput is a very strange galaxy that Arp didn't include in his list of peculiar galaxies. It is about 380 to 390 million light-years distant depending on the method used to determine its distance. Many other galaxies in the field are also at about this distance so it has plenty of companions. But which one, if any, caused its odd tidal distortions? While it has two compact companions on the west side I'd expect to see some distortion in them if they were involved. I don't see any in the field that are a likely candidate nor any in a field 5 times the size of mine. Best I can surmise is it is the result of it cannibalizing one or more of its neighbors. That might explain the odd long arm to the north. Is the cross piece of that arm a separate feature? Does the arm actually have a huge curve to it when seen from a different perspective with the sudden left turn just a matter of perspective? Is the knot in it a clue of some sort? I found no papers on this one that could shed any light on its odd appearance. Though HyperLeda considers it a multiple galaxy but no info on how this is derived. It could just mean they consider the two compact ellipticals as making it multiple or it itself is made up of multiple galaxies. They don't distinguish between the two. Though neither of the compacts is listed as being multiple though I've found that not necessarily a good indicator about which it is.

It is classed as an Sb peculiar galaxy at NED, just not one that interested Arp or maybe he didn't know of it. He poured over the POSS I plates so must have come across it. Also, the annotated image shows quasars in the area and he would have found that interesting to his near quack science theory about active galaxies expelling quasars with anomalous redshift not related to distance. Though these quasars may not have been known at the time of his atlas. Also, his idea was that the redshift increased the longer ago the object was expelled which would mean those closest to the strange emitting galaxy would have the least redshift. In this case, the projected distance of two quite distant in angular measurement from UGC 9829 have the lowest redshift which might have been an issue for him. In fact, those are close enough that even in my image the fuzz of the host galaxy is visible as the quasar has so dimmed it no longer outshines its host galaxy. Also, they seem to be questionable as quasars with one listed also as a Seyfert 1 galaxy and the other as having a Broad Line Active Galactic Nuclei.

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

Related Designations for UGC09829

UGC09887

Can a galaxy punt?

UGC 9887 is the strangest member of the ZwCl 1530.9+0454 galaxy cluster. The cluster contains some 211 members in a circle 73' or arc across, far larger than my field of view (FOV). The middle of the label for the cluster denotes the approximate coordinates of the cluster's center according to NED. I say approximate as NED assigns them an error bar of 3.5' of arc which is about three quarters the length of the label itself. The large S0 galaxy UGC 9886 is considered the bright cluster galaxy for this cluster though it isn't at the center. The cluster is a bit over a half billion light-years from us in the constellation of Serpens Caput.

UGC 9887 is classed by NED simply as S for spiral. It is a very strange spiral. I've never seen one that looks like a stick man punting a football before. It appears disrupted with two very weird arms on the south side and only a straight stub on the north side. How Arp missed putting it in his atlas I will never understand. It would fit in the three arm category, as well as the category for spirals with companions on their arm. In this case, the companion is a very tiny (about 7,000 lightyears across) dense galaxy. Thanks to the disruption or whatever is going on, the distance across the galaxy is about 175,000 light-years. That is very large for a single spiral. Though larger ones exist.

Below UGC 9887 and near this compact orange object is a faint round blue smudge that has a slightly red object to the lower left side still within the 11" circle of mottled fuzz. This brighter patch, as well as one of the mottled areas, are listed by the Sloan Survey as two galaxies. It doesn't mention the other faint brighter areas. There is no redshift for either. Are they one object, two or more? Do they have anything do do with how UGC 9887 looks today? I wasn't able to find any hint of an answer. It's just one of a zillion minor puzzles awaiting time and money to solve them.

While the vast majority of galaxies I found a redshift for are members of the cluster, there are several pairs and triples at other distances. There's one quasar in the image that is closer than a distant galaxy cluster in the image. The quasar is also listed as a Seyfert 1 galaxy.

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

Related Designations for UGC09887

UGC10168

UGC 10168 is a nice ring galaxy in northwest Hercules about 280 million light-years away. NED classifies it as (R)SAB0/a. It is part of a group of 6 others in my image that range from 280 to 330 million light-years away. The two at 330 million light-years are a close pair with a third galaxy of unknown distance.

I am rather confused by the southwest one which is 2MFG 12903, an irregular flat galaxy. What confuses me is the position NED lists for it. It is midway between the obvious flat galaxy and the small galaxy off its western edge. The pair with known distances form the galaxy pair CGCG 250-044 with the flat galaxy and its apparent companion known as CGCG 250-044 NED01 at the same position as the flat galaxy's well off center position. Yet the description is just that of the flat galaxy. Apparently, someone picked up the position of this close pair as a unit and applied it to the individual flat galaxy. Others just copied this error?

The image contains an unusual number of quasars, 11 of them though 8 are still considered quasar candidates that appears a formality. Their distances are still somewhat uncertain having been determined from filtered photographic data rather than the spectroscope. These quasar candidates are labeled UvES for Ultraviolet Excess Source a trait of very hot quasars.

Thanks to clouds I was clouded out in my first attempt. All color data was lost on the first try. I redid the color on another night. I later found one of the red frames from the first night was usable so I have a bit more red data than usual.

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

Related Designations for UGC10168