VII Zw 770

VII Zw 770 is a strange galaxy northeast of the head of Draco about 420 million light-years away by its redshift. NED classifies it as N galaxy? Those are defined as: "A galaxy with a small, bright, blue nucleus superposed on a much fainter red background. In terms of form, color, spectrum, redshift, and optical and radio variability, N galaxies are intermediate between quasars and Seyfert galaxies. The "N" designation comes from the Morgan classification."

If you've never heard of this system here's a short version: "A scheme invented by William Morgan that uses the integrated spectrum of the stars of a galaxy together with its shape (real and apparent) and its degree of central concentration. It specifies the galactic spectral type, a, af, f, fg, g, gk, or k (corresponding to the integrated stellar types); the form, type S (spiral), B (barred spiral), E (elliptical), I (irregular), Ep (elliptical with dust absorption), D (rotational symmetry without pronounced spiral or elliptical structure), L (low surface brightness), or N (small bright nucleus); and the inclination to the line of sight, from 1 (face-on) to 7 (edge-on). For example, the Andromeda Galaxy is classified as kS5."

To me, it looks like a typical small elliptical with two non-concentric rings with one centered to the right and one to the left of the core. But the CGPG says of it: "Red elliptical compact surrounded by a blue ring and two blue partial ring-like clouds beyond." That's three rings, two incomplete. I can't say I see that third ring nor do they appear blue, more white with a slight red tinge. I have no idea what is meant by the word "beyond".

Down and to the left is an edge on galaxy with a small apparent galaxy off its northern ansa. It appears slightly warped to me. Unfortunately, it isn't listed as a galaxy at NED only as an Ultraviolet source picked up by the Galex Uv satellite. The object to the north isn't in NED at all. Like everything else in the field, there's no distance data for it. Only a handful of galaxies in the field are even listed at NED as galaxies. Many others as UvS objects but considering the vast majority of the UvS objects listed are just stars I can't easily distinguish between a star-like galaxy or star and with many hundred, all with only approximate positions I didn't even try. Thus there's no annotated image with this image.

The only other galaxy worth mentioning is 2MASX J18100635+5822556 directly east of VII Zw 770. It shows two unequal faint diffuse arms. NED has nothing on it, not even a magnitude. This part of Draco is mostly ignored by galaxy research. Because of this, no annotated image was made.

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

Related Designations for VII Zw 770

VII Zw 941

VII Zw 941 is another one Arp missed. It would fit with his category for spirals with high surface brightness companions on the arm except that arm is mostly missing. So it might also fit his one-armed spiral category. It is located in Cepheus 1.6 degrees west of NGC 188. Both are very red as are the other galaxies in the image. There is some blue extinction at this galactic latitude but not enough to account for all these red galaxies. Apparently, they just are red. The CGPG catalog note on this galaxy pair says: "...red pair of Sc (galaxies) with compact core and spherical compact." NED doesn't attempt to classify either. The main one does appear Sc with a compact core but I'm not sure about the companion. Hard to tell if that's its fuzz around it or remains of the missing spiral arm of the brighter galaxy. In any case, the pair is listed at a redshift that puts them about a half billion light years distant. NED has no redshift data for any other galaxy in the field, not even the companion. NED shows a correct position for the main galaxy and for the companion but it also lists a third entry with nothing at that position. Since the only note they have is identical in all three I assume it is referring to this pair. But I can't make any sense out of the third entry.

No other galaxy in the image has any distance data. Therefore I've not prepared an annotated image.

The field, being near the pole, is enveloped in the IFN associated with the pole area. My exposures weren't long enough to really bring it out but it is responsible for all the faint nebulosity in the field.

The blue glow at bottom right is due to a star that was giving me fits. I moved the field low thinking I'd moved it out of the field far enough but it managed to get its glow into the image anyway. I might as well have left it in the image.

This image was taken after a severe storm so damaged my two Polaris Trees, I've often mentioned, that they were in danger of falling on either the house or the observatory or lower garage. One of those would most likely get flattened. Since they were over 100' tall there was no place to drop them that wouldn't damage something expensive, I had to hire a tree company to take them down. Turned out both had suffered severe damage in the past that was hidden. They could have come down any time since we built here. The storm just exposed this risk so the only thing flattened was the bank account.

This galaxy is at 85 degrees north. I now can see Polaris for the first time since building the observatory! This galaxy has been frustratingly out of reach all these years. So was first on the list once the trees were history. They will heat us all next winter. Enough wood in those two to provide all our wood heat needs. Solar provides most of the day winter heating, even at -30C temperatures by day and colder at night. They were huge red pine. Rings show them to be almost 200 years old. Loggers should have taken them when this area was logged about 1908. The tree service said that's likely when they suffered a severe rot problem so were left. Logging was by hand in those days. They only took perfect trees and these were too damaged for them to take. Both showed they'd been hit by lightning several times as well. I kept them as they blocked snow from the observatory. Last year we had virtually none. So that wasn't an issue. But will I be as lucky this year? Probably not.

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

Related Designations for VII Zw 941

VIOLIN CLEF

The Violin Clef galaxy has no catalog entry at all that I could find! Though it does have its unofficial common name. The j2000.0 coordinates for the galaxy itself are 00h 04m 15.4s +03d 23' 02" based on my plate solve. It was found by a participant at Galaxy Zoo last year. His announcement post is at http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/index.php?topic=279443.0 along with the Sloan image he was looking at. Since then some work has been done on this system of 4 galaxies. All 4 have the same redshift z=0.0956 +/- 0.002 which puts them about 1 and a quarter billion light-years away light travel time. Somehow their interaction has drawn out this huge double tail on the one galaxy without seeming to harm the others.
http://www.facebook.com/notes/galaxy-zoo-mergers/update-on-the-violin-clef-merger-redshifts-and-merger-zoo/300628689947360
This link says all four galaxies are red as is the tidal tail. I wasn't able to get much color data for the long tails but what little I got is very slightly red. Certainly, all four galaxies are. The spectra show little evidence of star formation triggered by the interaction. This is puzzling. Could this be due to most of the gas and dust having been ejected from the system by another interaction in the distant past?

The system is in a region of Pisces for which there's little data. While Sloan has imaged this area the data isn't as yet in NED. It lists only a few galaxies in the area, not the Violin Clef of course. I wasn't going to make an annotated image but there were three asteroids in the image, one of which moved less than one second of arc during the time of my luminance exposures so appears exactly the same as a star in the image. Just that when you examine the field using Sloan or the DSS there's no star at that position.

The violin clef is the shape of the two acoustic holes in a violin. They are mirror images of each other so this is the violin's left one. It makes a good integral sign if you look only at the center galaxy but when all four are considered the violin clef shape makes more sense.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=5x10' RGB=2x10' STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for VIOLIN CLEF

VV697

VV 697 is a quadruple galaxy though NED only catalogs 3. Is the 4th related? Wish I knew.

At the center of the 4 are two spiral galaxies, one, a near edge-on somewhat obscured by the face on. The edge-on galaxy is the uncatalogued one. NED does show a UVs 7 seconds to its south with an error circle of 1.45 seconds and no redshift, but this appears to be a piece of the middle galaxies spiral arm. The mystery galaxy does appear to be behind the spiral. How far behind I can't tell. Considering how much redder its core is than the other galaxies I am thinking it likely is quite a bit more distant assuming the reddening is due to gas and dust beyond the others. The other three constitute VV697 as NED sees it. The center one, partly hiding the unknown galaxy is VV 697 NED 02. NED lists it as a starburst spiral with HII emissions. It appears to be the center galaxy. Redshift puts it at 755 million light-years away. The galaxy to the northwest is VV 697 NED01. To me, it looks like an SB(r) galaxy but NED just calls it Peculiar and notes it has a Seyfert 1 core. Redshift puts it at 747 million light-years. It has large plumes so may be interacting with its companion to the east. A bar of stars appears to connect the two at their southern ends. The galaxy to the south is VV 697 NED03. NED lists it simply as a spiral with HII emission. Redshift puts it at 753 million light-years. The redshift differences are immaterial and likely just reflect relative velocity rather than real distance differences. It is safe to say this group is about 750 million light-years distant and let it go at that. This group is in the northeast corner of the Great Square of Pegasus not far from Alpha Andromedae. The PGC numbers for the three galaxies NED1 through 3 respectively are 72911, 72910 and 72909.

There is little on the rest of the field. The thin edge-on galaxy to the northeast is 2MFGC 17969. So it is indeed an official "flat galaxy", just not as flat as those in the Flat Galaxy Catalog. The fuzzball galaxy in the lower left corner is the IR galaxy 2MASX J23565508+2521263. A handful of other fainter galaxies are listed in NED. None with much useful information, nearly all from the 2 micron survey. The exception is GALEX 2667408633447319057 which is a quasar candidate but has no redshift distance. It is listed as a UvES which often turn out to be quasars. To find it follow the line from VV697 through the flat galaxy and continue about the same distance. You should come to a very blue star that's rather bright. It is above a much brighter orange star and below a blue-white star also brighter than the quasar candidate but fainter than the orange star. It's the bluest object in the area.

This field has been covered in the DR8 Sloan release. I've attached an image from that release of this area. But the data hasn't, as yet, been incorporated into NED. When it is I imagine some of the questions will get answered. This grouping was another suggested by Sakib Rasool.

One green frame was lost to clouds.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RB=2x10'x3 G=1x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for VV697

WBL071

This field is in Andromeda less than a degree southeast of the far more famous NGC 891. CGCG 538-059/PGC 9101 is one Arp missed for his category spiral galaxies with a low surface brightness galaxy on an arm. Like many Arp put in this category the companion has no redshift data. In this case, the field is very poorly cataloged so it isn't even listed. While it appears likely it is a true companion I can't verify it. It is a very blue galaxy that could indicate interaction. The main galaxy has one cut off arm and one long one apparently drawn out by the companion. I moved it to the upper right of the image to pick up as much of the WBL 071 galaxy cluster as possible.

WBL 071 is a part of the much larger Abell 0347 galaxy cluster. The center of the Abell cluster is a few minutes south of the bottom edge of my image. It is listed as having a diameter of 863 minutes or 14.4 degrees! That can't be right. Abell lists no diameter in his catalog. 86.3 minutes would be reasonable but is it right? It is listed as Richness Class 0 which is the smallest class in number of galaxies with 30 to 49 galaxies. WBL 071 is listed with 18 galaxies with no size. It is centered a bit NE of NGC 906. NGC 911 is listed as a member of the WBL 071 group. NGC 898 is not listed as being a member of either group.

In the upper left corner is an odd grouping of galaxies. It appears to be a cluster of apparently very distant galaxies around a large elliptical. Oddly the entire group seems the same orange color as if some paintbrush was used to color that part of my image with the same color. While 7 of the galaxies are in NED none have a redshift. Is the color due to some dust cloud between the group and us or is the group distant enough that this is due to general dust and gas extinction? All of these that NED lists are from the 2MASS catalog so are dusty galaxies emitting a lot of IR light. Wish I knew more about this group.

The annotated image lists what few galaxies NED had redshift distance data. Since room wasn't a problem I listed them by catalog name, classification and distance in billions of light-years. Oddly this turned up two apparent mistakes. CGCG 538-060 classed as E/U is an obvious spiral rather than an elliptical. Anyone know what the /U means. It's new to me nor did I turn up anything on it as a classification. The other error involves CGCG 538-059 which was my main target! NED classes it as SB, that is a barred spiral. I see no hint of a bar and the arms deserve at least a "b" rating. That is what a note at NED says. It classes it as Sb. Probably just a capitalization error at NED.

All four WBL 071 NGC galaxies were discovered by Édouard Stephan. He found NGC 906, 909 and 911 on October 30, 1878 and NGC 914 a month later on November 30, 1878. NGC 898 was discovered by William Herschel on October 17, 1786. It's not in either of the H400 programs.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for WBL071

WBL073

WBL 073 is a 5 galaxy group in Aries the ram. NED puts the group's distance at 430 million light-years. The 5 are PGC 009220, NGC 0915, PGC 009233, NGC 0916 and NGC 0919. Note that NGC 0915 is much closer than the other 4 by redshift. Other galaxies in the image are at the right distance and likely members of the same group as the 4 but don't make the WBL 73 group criteria. Apparently, distance isn't important. I couldn't find any criteria but that the galaxy is magnitude 15.7 or brighter and has an overdensity of 10^(4/3). The catalog is known as the Catalog of Nearby Poor Clusters of Galaxies. The authors are, White, Bliton, Bhavsar, Bornmann, Burns, Ledlow and Loken. Apparently, WBBBBLL was shortened to WBL. The catalog has 732 entries. I only have a few on my to-do list. Since the southern cutoff is 2 degrees south all are within my range.

The three NGC galaxies were discovered by Albert Marth on September 5, 1864. The field is poorly studied bein in the Zone of Avoidance. I've listed everything on which NED has redshift data and identified those easily visible that don't have any distance data. Most don't have anything but their position.

As usual, this winter weather was poor for this image. The blue frames were hit by thin clouds creating nasty blue halos around bright blue stars. I toned them down but couldn't totally eliminate them without doing other harm. Transparency was poor for all frames limiting how deep I could go. This is the main reason the background seems strangely free of faint stars and galaxies. To take the noise I had to set the dark point higher than normal.

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

Related Designations for WBL073

WBL130

WBL 130 is a three galaxy group in the southeast corner of Lynx. NED lists it as being about 270 million light-years away and consisting of three galaxies. But what three? It would seem easy, the three obvious ones in my image. Problem is one of the three is a background galaxy. Redshift shows the lower left one, UGC 03679, to be an Sa galaxy that is 270 million light-years away. So far so good. The middle galaxy is CGCG 205-017, an Sb spiral at 267 million light-years. So that fits. But the upper right galaxy, UGC 03673, a SABcd spiral, is listed with a redshift that puts it 687 million light-years away. It is 2.5 times more distant yet only slightly smaller in angular size so must be about 2 times larger. So where is the third member of the group? Maybe this is it. The WBL catalog is labeled as being a catalog of nearby, poor, galaxy groups. It doesn't record distance so that was provided by NED from some other source. Nor does it list a diameter for the group. So it may be that it just records apparent groups whether they are all members of the same local group or not. But then we come to the flat galaxy at the bottom of my image. It is FGC 598, an Sd spiral that has a redshift that puts it 272 million light-years away. So it certainly is related to the lower two galaxies above. Also, NED lists a note about it under those two galaxies as well as under FGC 598. So that points to it being the third member. Are any of the other galaxies in the image also at about 270 million light-years? Darned if I know. These are the only 4 galaxies in the image on which NED has any redshift data. The few others it lists are all from the 2MASS survey and don't even include magnitude estimates since the survey isn't at visual light frequencies but those sort of between IR and radio.

UGC 3679 has a nice dark lane that is unsymmetrical and warped. It seems to have a very faint blue halo of stars about it. Are these due to interaction? Maybe just the result of eating a few dwarf galaxies that got too close. I measure it at about 64 arc seconds across which makes it almost 85,000 light-years across. A quite respectable spiral galaxy. CGCG 205-017 is nearly as large at about 82,000 light years in my image. FGC 598 is a bit smaller at about 60 million lightyears end to end. This leaves distant UGC 03673. I measure it at 50" across, which at 687 million light-years makes it huge at 166,000 light years in diameter. A very large spiral indeed.

There's another galaxy that is darned flat in the image. It is above FGC 598 and below CGCG 205-017. It is fainter and smaller than the other galaxies. It is 2MASX J07070773+4445336 but that's all I can tell you about it.

Sharp-eyed viewers might notice what appears to be a short linear asteroid trail in the lower right quadrant. At first, I thought it short due to it being taken over several nights (see below) but it shows clearly in all luminance frames taken over those three nights at exactly the same location! It also appears in the POSS plates. It must be yet another very flat galaxy but one that is very small with a sharp edge. Hard to imagine one that could look this way. I looked in vain for a higher resolution image of the object but found none. It's at 7h 6m 23.4s +44d 42' 8" for those who want to hunt further. It didn't make NED's short list of galaxies in the field so is anonymous as far as I can determine.

The color is a bit suspect in this image. I took the data over three nights, all of which had cloud issues. I took about 30 frames, most color frames but seeing was highly variable as well as transparency. I ended up using the best 4 luminance frames and best 2 color frames out of the bunch for each color. Adding any more seemed to reduce the quality of the image. Using these ten seemed to give the best final results. But the blue channel suffered compared to the other two colors. I had to wing it to compensate for this. So I'm not at all confident the color is right, just the best I can do with the data on hand. If the area was more interesting I'd reshoot all frames as even the luminance channel was hurt by the bad transparency and doesn't begin to go as deep as I usually do.

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

Related Designations for WBL130

WBL179

WBL 179 is in a field jam-packed with galaxies. The 7 brightest make up the WBL 179 group. 5 of which are about 400 million light-years distant and 2 are half that distance. This appears to be part of a much larger cluster, ZwCl 0820.6+0436 which is just over a degree in diameter and contains 163 galaxies. While NED puts it at about 400 million light-years distant the vast majority of the galaxies in my image and out to a larger area cover a wide range of distances. Many out to 1.2 billion light-years. NED lists a couple clusters at that distance, WHL J082258.9+041756 with 29 members and SDSS-C4-DR3 1283 with 23. Their positions differ by only 2" of arc so are likely referring to the same group, just defined slightly differently. Many other lesser groups are listed at NED that likely are subgroups of these. As usual, I picked up a few very distant galaxies but most fall within 1.3 billion light-years. The result is one of the densest annotated images I've made as I included all NED had a redshift value for and were bright enough to survive JPG compression.

What drew me to the field is that the brighter galaxies and stars seem arranged in an oval shape. This is lost in the annotated image but shows well in the full image. Our brains are designed to see patterns, though which ones seem a personal thing. Jesus in toast looked like Frank Zappa to me and I'm yet to see the "Running Chicken". Still, the oval struck me so it went on the to-do list. That large number of fainter galaxies were gravy.

The field is located in northwestern Hydra. All three IC galaxies were discovered by Lewis Swift on March 8, 1888. Apparently, the others were too faint for his telescope. He was using the 16" Clark refractor at Warner Observatory, Rochester, New York. It was later moved to Echo Mountain in California. Some of the other galaxies seem bright enough for a 16" refractor so how he missed them I don't understand. Though likely the expansion of Rochester was hurting his skies. He moved it to California in 1893, 5 years after finding these galaxies.

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

Related Designations for WBL179

WBL360

WBL 360 is a group of galaxies about 390 million light-years from us in the southwest corner of Virgo. There's a second group at 600 million light-years. One in this second group seems made up of two likely interacting galaxies. NED's position points to the gap between the two. These are below the main galaxies. The label NSA 140313 has two lines, one to each galaxy. They appear to be dwarf galaxies.

To the left of these near the left edge is 2dFGRS N175Z154. It is the middle of a tight vertical group of three galaxies. Only the middle one has redshift data. Are they related? Or are the two end ones related but the smaller and fainter middle one unrelated? I have no idea. Above these, is 2dFGRS N175Z152 which I've labeled as 3G as it appears all three are referred to by this catalog entry. They all overlap, even in the Sloan image of them. A trio of interacting galaxies? Again I have no idea.

In order to give catalog names to these that were more than just positions, I had to resort to quite an eclectic collection of catalogs. Normally when this happens I just go with G for Galaxy but in this case, I wanted to point out these double and triple galaxies. I had to resort to these catalogs to do so or give lengthy RA and Dec coordinates that often overlapped other objects.

5 asteroids were in the frame but one was just too faint to show so I labeled only 4 of them. The one omitted was listed by the Minor Planet Center as brighter than two I did label but was much fainter. I don't find their magnitude estimates all that accurate even after accounting for their angular velocity. I'm considering dropping the magnitude they provide as just too unreliable. Of course, a faster asteroid will appear fainter than a slow one of the same actual magnitude. I'm taking that into account. In fact, the one I left out was slower than the fainter ones I included making the error even more obvious.

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

Related Designations for WBL360

WBL400

The galaxy trio of WBL 400 was suggested to me by Sakib Rasool as a group of slightly interacting galaxies. The group is located in western Canes Venatici about 315 million light-years from our galaxy. The southern galaxy is a Sa spiral with two very different arms as if something has churned things up greatly. The red northern elliptical has an odd bar running through it from the north-northeast to the south-southwest making it look almost like it is a combination of a disk and elliptical galaxy. On the other hand, the eastern Sa spiral is rather normal looking though the western arm is more drawn out than the eastern. So there are hints of interaction with each other but who disturbed who I can't say.

The northern elliptical is about 90,000 miles across the odd bar or plume structure. The other two are slightly smaller at about 70,000 to 75,000 light-years across depending on how far out I trace the hints of their possible plumes. All three occupy a projected space that is about 250,000 light-years across assuming they are at the same distance. There no other galaxies in the field with a similarly measured redshift. These three seem rather alone in their region of space.

About the same angular size located to the southeast is a blue dwarf galaxy that carried two designations. One for the northern part, ASK 507390 and the southern known as LEDA 4126044. NED lists the latter as part of the former. It certainly does appear to be one irregular galaxy. At only 62 million light-years it is only about 15,000 light-years across.

To the west of WBL 400 is an odd appearing ASK 507364.0 at 860,000 light-years. It seems to have two cores. But the one to the northeast (upper right) is actually just a star in our galaxy that happens to have a color rather similar to that of the galaxies true core.

The annotated image lists all galaxies in the field I could get redshift data on at NED. Unfortunately, that's only a small percentage of the many background galaxies in the image. The most distant at 4.03 billion light-years has a redshift that puts it very slightly more distant than the nearest quasar at 4.02 billion light-years. That is a rather rare occurrence. I wonder what Arp might have had to say about that.

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

Related Designations for WBL400