VDB152

The nebula vdB 152 has other catalog numbers but no common name I know of. This is a very odd object still not well understood. It wasn't discovered until 1979, that's how faint it is. It is a column of dust, a molecular cloud to use the correct term. This is cold gas and dust, cold enough nothing is ionized so rather than existing as a plasma like most nebula (the Orion Nebula for instance or the two in my last update) the stuff in the cloud is ordinary molecules much like you'd find here on earth. In this case, they are very cold as this one is thought to consist mostly of frozen hydrocarbons. Really frozen, like colder than liquid nitrogen.

Normally in a reflection nebula, the illuminating star isn't hot enough to have much ultraviolet light. Ultraviolet light is what heats up the cloud and ionizes it to glow as a normal nebula. Since a reflection nebula shines only by light reflected from the star the star can't have much ultraviolet light. But not in this case. This star is very hot and emits mostly ultraviolet light. But this cloud has virtually no gas in it, just frozen hydrocarbons. They are too heavy for the light to heat and ionize. But when hit with strong enough ultraviolet light these compounds can glow much like some minerals do when hit by ultraviolet light. It is a combination of red scattering from galactic starlight (not the light of the blue star) combined with the slight red luminescence of these compounds when hit by 2200 angstrom ultraviolet light from the star that gives it its blue color. We are dealing with a very faint object here, except for the blue part. That is bright enough to see visually in a large scope.

This shot needed 90 minutes of luminance data for the image and 40 minutes in each color binned 3x3. I've never done this before but it was necessary due to how faint this guy is.

While some of you might think this like the "Pillars of Creation" in M16 that's not at all what's going on here. The blue star at the tip is not related to the molecular cloud at all. It just happens to be passing through it right now. They are moving very different directions and speed in space. It is just a coincidence we are living at the time they collided. Actually, that was about 1700 years ago.

There's not much on the net about this guy except a few very deep scientific papers that I waded through at least in part. I soon was in over my head most of the time. A shot of it that was in NASA's Astronomy Picture of the day is at: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070614.html It is supposedly in color but the nebula shows very little. I don't know why except the photographer likely used the normal mix of color to luminance data which isn't enough in this case. I'm just guessing here however as that detail isn't provided. That image has south up while I usually have north up as in this case.

This was taken with my old filters that had a rather nasty halo problem. I need to retake it with current filters to clean up these halo issues. For now, this will have to do.

14" LX200R, L=9x10' RGB=4x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for VDB152

VDB153

vdB 153 is a reflection nebula in Cepheus around the star GSC 4268:166 aka BD+64 1677 which SIMBAD lists as a Be star. Meaning it is a B2V star with emission lines. I find very little on the nebula or star. From its location, I will assume it is part of the Cepheus Bubble that surrounds the Cepheus OB2 star-forming region. That has a distance of about 900 parsecs by some estimates, about 3,000 light-years. The nebula alone is known as GN 22.21.5. There's an interesting looking double dark nebula in the lower right corner though SIMBAD has nothing on it. There are many of these in the sky that aren't individually cataloged. Too small to bother with I suppose. They look like Bok globules though that's only my surmise.

Due to the weak HII signal, I processed it out as just too noisy to include. I'd planned on much more exposure time and did take a lot more but seeing was poor but for one night. I decided the faint nebulosity added less than the bad seeing subtracted so only used the data from the night of best seeing. While seeing was good this night the transparency wasn't what it was the nights of poor seeing. The "atmospheric uncertainty principle" at work I suppose.

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

Related Designations for VDB153

VDB155

vdB 155/LBN 524 is a reflection nebula in Cepheus just southwest of the far more famous Cave Nebula. Otto Struve, http://cdsbib.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/cdsbib?1962PASP...74..474S , lists its illuminating star as HD 216658 which is the star to the lower left (southeast) of the center of the nebula. The star near the center is HD 216629. This is the star van den Berg listed as the coordinates for the nebula. Though he never actually claimed it to be the illuminating star, just the star at the center of the nebula. He always used a the centermost star for the coordinates. While I found no distance estimate for the nebula itself (see below) or HD 216658 I did find in The Sky a distance estimate for HD 216629 of 173,332,000 AU which works out to about 2741 light-years. While there are several different estimates for the distance to the Cave Nebula (Sh2-155) they cluster about 2,800 light years. Most sources consider Sh2-155 and vdB155/LBN 524 to both be part of the Cepheus OB3 association. If HD 216658 is the illuminating star it may also be at about the same distance. It is slightly brighter as seen from earth, magnitude 8.9 versus 9.3 and is hotter being a B0.5V star. I suspect they may both be involved but that's just my speculation.

Another paper http://iopscience.iop.org/0067-0049/110/1/21/ indicates LBN 524 is part of the Cepheus OB3 association at 730 parsecs or 2400 light years. Since the Cave Nebula is also considered to be related to the OB3 association it would seem these distance estimates have a rather large, but not unexpected, error bar.

It is an interesting coincidence that while this reflection nebula, likely part of the same complex as the Cave Nebula, is vdB 155 while the Cave Nebula is Sh2-155. I found that very confusing as I wrote this -- which 155 is which kept tripping me up.

The outskirts of Sh2-155 is seen in the upper left of my image though doesn't overlap my image of the Sh2-155. At least one more frame would be needed to connect the two. You can find many wide-angle images of the area that do show both.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10' (needed much more but weather wouldn't cooperate), STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for VDB155

VDB157

vdB 157 is a reflection nebula in northern Cepheus around the star HD 217903. It is a B9V star in the Cepheus Flare, a huge nearby giant molecular cloud about 15 degrees above the plane of our galaxy as seen from Earth. It is the home to many interesting deep sky objects such as the Cave Nebula, ghostly vdB 141, vdB 152 sometimes called the star eating leach and this nebula among others. Hipparcos puts the parallax of HD 217903 at about 1200 light-years. It is apparently far enough from the cloud it doesn't heat or ionize it so we see it as a blue reflection nebula rather than an emission nebula. Due to the strong extinction caused by the cloud background galaxies aren't seen.

The entire field is full of faint, rather white nebulosity. Unfortunately, this is another image hurt by my low transparency much of 2012. August was a better month but it wasn't the night I took this one. The high haze put a nasty glow around the illuminating star which I was only partly successful in removing. I need to revisit it on a better night. So far 2013 hasn't been any improvement.

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

Related Designations for VDB157

VDB158PK110

The large nebula extending well beyond my image is the reflection nebula LBN 111.05-12.46 aka DG 191 aka LBN 534. It is located in Cassiopeia. The B8V star HD 222142 illuminates the blue reflection nebula vdB 158. Though many consider vdB158 as the same as the far larger cloud LBN 111.05-12.46 this is incorrect from what I found. Are they two separate objects or is HD 222142 in the larger cloud but only illuminating the smaller nebula? I found only one estimate, in the Italian Wikipedia, of the distance to vdB158 saying it is about 440 parsecs away (1435 light-years). I don't know if this is meant to apply to the larger cloud or just the blue nebula around HD 222142.

Also in the image is the planetary nebula PK110-12.1 down in the lower left corner of my frame. One paper puts its distance as 13,620 light-years. I expect there are too many significant digits to that distance estimate. If correct then the nebula has a diameter of about 2.25 light-years.
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1992A%26AS...94..399C/0000399.000.html

There are quite a few galaxies in the image if you hunt for them. All NED lists are from the 2MASS IR survey. NED shows no redshift nor magnitude data for any of them. The majority aren't in NED being anonymous as far as I can tell.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=7x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for VDB158PK110

VEIL SEGMENT

This is the Happy Alien Nebula. Bet you never heard of it. That's because I just named it that. It has no catalog entry I could find except SIMBAD calls it "NAME Southeast Cloud in Cygnus Loop" giving a position just east of its "head". Can you see the alien? He has two blue legs with red feet. A long faint tail curving down to the left. He has a big smiling mouth with a moderately bright star in it and a red pointy nose. He is all head with no torso. His left arm is waving at us. But the way he's half blue and half red make me wonder if there isn't another alien out there that's got the colors reversed. If so Kirk and the Enterprise could be in for it all over again.

Seriously this is a widely separated part of a large supernova remnant known as the Cygnus Loop with many parts each with its own catalog and common names such as Pickering's Triangle, The Witch's Broom, and Veil. But it is so far from the other parts it rarely shows up even in wide field shots of the complex. For those wanting to find it, it is located at: 20h 56m 18s +30d 23' 47". I've never looked for it visually so don't know what size scope is needed to see it. I'd expect a 10" with an OIII filter should show it though it may be very faint. While this alien has a faint tail like much of the life on earth, space aliens of the movies rarely do. Does sentient life lose its tail?

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

Related Designations for VEIL SEGMENT

VII Zw 140

VII Zw 140 is described as a "Blue post-eruptive multiple (elliptical) ring spiral, with compact elliptical core" according to the CGPG. Though it is slightly red in my image it does look blue to the eye. Redshift puts it about 150 million light-years from us. Two Tully-Fisher measurements are in close agreement saying 160 million light-years. This makes it about 65,000 light-years across its largest diameter. NED classifies it as (R)SA(r)ab with a Seyfert 2 core. The structure is surprisingly heart-like in its inner ring though the outer ring is only slightly oval. It is found in northern Lynx.

Unfortunately, the field is just close enough to the Zone of Avoidance that there's little on the other objects in the field. Only two other galaxies have redshift data. MCG +10-11-028 is the SBc galaxy to the east of VII Zw 140. It is listed with a redshift distance of 160 million light-years making it likely part of the same local group as VII Zw 140. To the west is MCG +10-11-010 which is much more distant at a bit over a half billion light-years so over 3 times as distant. It looks like a barred disk galaxy SB0/a would be my guess.

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

Related Designations for VII Zw 140

VII ZW 190

VII Zw 190 is a blue ring galaxy 290 million light-years distant and 60,000 light-years across in Camelopardalis 10 degrees west of M81 and M82. I can find nothing on it but a paper on galactic coordinates and another on galactic radial velocities.

Ring galaxies like this fascinate me but all too many are like this one with no one looking at them trying to explain how this structure is created. Rings tend to be blue the area between the ring and the core isn't blank like it often appears and is usually quite red as it is in this case. The core is usually made of old population II stars same as the cores of most galaxies. We seem to see all of them near face on. This bothers me. We should see them from all angles. If the ring is just a sphere of stars seen like we see the edge of a bubble I'd think we'd still see some hint of the sphere, not just the red region between. Still, the sphere explains why all are seen nearly "face on". If anyone knows a paper or two on these that can explain why most all seem face on please let me know. Or an example of one seen at an obvious narrow-angle. I've not found one.

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

Related Designations for VII ZW 190

VII ZW 279

VII Zw 279 or how to write several paragraphs with nothing to write about. But I like to type so here goes, well, nothing much.

As I've mentioned before, ring galaxies in which the ring has no apparent connection to the core but for a rather even, faint, disk fascinate me. How is such a structure formed? VII Zw 279 is yet another galaxy of this type. I assumed there'd be something on it but except for a listing in a catalog of catalogs, I couldn't find a thing on it. Other than it is a 17.0 magnitude ring galaxy. The CGPG says of it "Red, circular ring galaxy." I saw that red mentioned which caught my interest as rings are usually blue not red. After I processed the image it was indeed blue. I checked the POSS II plates which also show it as blue. I found no other sources of color data but the POSS plates. I assume the red refers to the core which usually is rather red in these galaxies. Though when I checked the POSS I plates the ring looks neutral to faintly red in color. That may be the cause of the red remark. Why the difference I don't know. NED classifies it as (R)SA0^+^.

The galaxy is located in Draco though the western 40% or so of the image is in Camelopardalis. The field is only 10 degrees from the pole. Not one galaxy in the field has a redshift value at NED, not even VII Zw 279. So I have no idea how distant it is or how big it is.

Below and left is a strange looking galaxy that sort of reminds me of a horseshoe crab with its tail cocked to one side. It isn't in either NED or SIMBAD. Its coordinates are 09h 29m 52.3s +80d 15m 8s. It is at the bottom left of the cropped image. Is it two interacting galaxies? There are a lot of very faint, likely very distant galaxies in the field but I found nothing on any of them worth mentioning.

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

Related Designations for VII ZW 279

VII ZW 466

VII Zw 466 is an empty ring galaxy about 650 million light-years away in the tail of Draco. It is 4.6 minutes north of NGC 4613, another type of ring galaxy. VII Zw 466 is what is called an "empty ring galaxy" since it consists only of a ring with no core. These are thought to be due to a direct hit by a high speed small but massive galaxy. Could it be one of the three galaxies also named VII Zw 467 to its east? Two are known to be at about the same redshift and likely distance. The third has no redshift data that I could find. There is a reddish object in the "empty" core of VII Zw 466 at the northwest edge. Could this be the core of the galaxy or is it the colliding galaxy? Its position is the one NED uses for VII Zw 466 itself rather than the center of the ring. This could indicate NED considers it at least part of the galaxy. For now, I'll say it is most likely the remains of the galaxy's core.

I've noted the three VII Zw 467 galaxies on the annotated image. The northern one had no redshift data. Also identified in the image is VII Zw 468 at 630 million light-years. Several other galaxies at about this same distance are noted in the annotated image.

Several UvES objects are noted in the annotated image. These are likely quasars. Their identification is by photographic means, not as accurate as using a spectrograph. Distance is less certain as well.

NGC 4513 is much closer at 110 million light years. It has an interesting mostly disconnected faint diffuse ring. It is classed as (R)SA0^0^ at NED and S0 at the NGC project. It was discovered by Heinrich d'Arrest on October 16, 1866.

To the right of center is a blue object at 2.3 billion light-years. NED shows it both as a galaxy and a quasar so it got a double label G/Q. It's also an IR source, 2MASX J12302215+6621551.

There's an interesting pair of galaxies to the southwest of NGC 4513 beyond a bright orange star. Only the right member has a redshift measurement. That puts it at the same distance as the VII Zw galaxies. Are the two really close together or is this a line of sight coincidence? Neither looks distorted so I'll say they aren't close enough to interact. Mostly a guess on my part.

To the east of NGC 4513 I was sure I saw two galaxy clusters but while NED shows the galaxies individually, none with redshift data, it shows no galaxy cluster at those two locations. I've marked them with GC? The upper left one is very faint and looked like noise but it shows on the Sloan image of the area. One is obviously a star in the Sloan's higher resolution but the rest appear to be galaxies. Same for the brighter group. I seem to have a need for a slightly larger image area as several clusters were listed just barely beyond my field on all sides. One appears to have some of its galaxies in the frame so I marked it with a line going off-frame. The center is 19 seconds of arc north of the frame's edge. It is WHL J123106.8+663229 at 2.3 billion light-years. Look along the top, right of center.

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

Related Designations for VII ZW 466