IC0467

When I imaged NGC 2336 in 2013 I noted some references said it was a non-interacting pair with IC 467. That caused me to put that galaxy on the to-do list. It was finally taken last March. Since my field is 20 minutes high and NGC 2336 is 20 minutes, mostly north of IC 467 I couldn't fit them into the same field. Even rotating the camera wouldn't do it due to the large angular size of NGC 2336. Both of these are located in Camelopardalis only 10 degrees from the north celestial pole. NED shows a redshift distance for IC 467 of about 95 million light-years with non-redshift measurements at 105 million light-years. They classify it as SAB(s)c:. Seligman agrees but leaves of the questioning colon. The galaxy was discovered by William Denning, an English astronomer, on November 7, 1890. It was one of 17 new IC objects he found using a 10" reflector.

Since it has been considered a companion of NGC 2336, even though the images were taken over 2 years apart I did manage to mosaic the two together without reprocessing the NGC 2336 image. Though it was taken under better seeing the two merged without any adjustment to either. Though that makes the seam obvious if you look for it. I'm just too tied up for time to reprocess to match. Apparently, I processed them very much alike. Not sure what that says about my improvement in processing over the last two years. Redshift data puts NGC 2336 at about 100 light-years with its non-redshift measurements at 105 million light-years. Thus it is quite likely the two are a gravitationally bound pair. There may be other dwarf companions but with no redshift data for any other galaxy in the field, I can't identify any candidates. NGC 2336 was discovered by Wilhelm Temple in 1876. I couldn't find any better date. It is classified SBbc by Seligman and SAB(r)bc;RET Sy2 by NED. I covered what a retired nucleus was in an earlier posting but it is basically one in which starburst activity has ceased as has nearly all star-forming activity near the core. Though the black hole seems to be still feeding rather well since it is a Seyfert 2 galaxy. My post from October 4, 2013 is at: ( http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/436033-ngc-2336-a-rarely-imaged-beautiful-spiral/ or http://www.spacebanter.com/showthread.php?t=199390 )

With no other galaxies having any data at NED I didn't prepare an annotated image.

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

Related Designations for IC0467

IC0480

I put IC 480/2MFGC 6287 on my to-do list when I saw an amateur image of it that showed it as very blue. An edge on galaxy may be blue at the ansae but usually is quite reddened for much of its length so this was highly unusual. Looking at the POSS images I thought I saw the same. But after processing, I find it is quite typical of flat edge on galaxies so wasn't blue after all. Still, it is a flat galaxy though not flat enough to make it into the Flat Galaxy Catalog but is in the 2 micron version which is a bit more lax on entrance requirements. Also, its dust lane is not straight as is typically seen and there are several bright blobs seen against the edge on galaxy. Several are listed at NED as being separate galaxies though I'm quite sure they are just star clouds in the galaxy as their redshift is very similar to IC 480. Though seeing such clouds is rare in edge on galaxies. It is classified by NED as Sbc and Sbc? by Seligman. It was discovered by Stephane Javelle on March 18, 1892. It is a rather large spiral at about 125,000 light-years in diameter assuming the redshift distance of 220 million light-years.

The field turns out to be rather interesting. It is located in northeastern Gemini not far, 2.5 degrees, from Pollux. To its southwest is the radio galaxy AGC 172071 also at a redshift of 220 million light-years. It appears to be a strange dwarf galaxy. NED's only catalog entry for it is from a radio catalog. None of the visual catalogs seem to have an entry for it.

To the northeast of IC 480 is another highly strange looking galaxy, PGC 22209 at 450 million light-years. It appears rather disrupted having various parts, dim and rather bright. Tucked in between two bright regions is what NED classifies as another galaxy, ASK 180095.0. It is shown to be 500 million light-years distant. A bit too much difference to be just part of the galaxy so likely is a separate galaxy behind it. It is a tiny spherical object. Nearby to the east PGC 022221 is a two armed spiral in which the southern arm is much broader and brighter than the northern one. It is some 830 million light-years distant. It is listed as an SC galaxy by NED. To its east is the S0 galaxy PGC 022227 which has what appears to be a rather obvious dust lane on its eastern side.

To the southeast of IC 480 is small (in appearance) edge on ASK 204215.0. If brighter it likely would make one or both of the flat galaxy catalogs but is too faint for either. It is small only because of its distance of 1.17 billion light-years. It is actually larger than IC 480 at 150,000 light-years in size.

The field contains several quasars (Q) and quasar candidates (QC). The candidates have only a photometric redshift which can sometimes be incorrect. NED lists dozens in the field. I've identified only those NED seems to feel are likely valid but still calls them candidates until more data is in.

Two asteroids were caught in the lower part of the image. See the annotated image for details.

Transparency was a bit better than I've had, still below what used to be normal, which allowed me to pick up some galaxies out as far as 4 and 5 billion light-years. They are marked in the annotated image.

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

Related Designations for IC0480

IC0498

IC 0498 is a spiral galaxy that fits Arp's category for spirals with one heavy arm. Its arm seems odd in that the heavy part spirals in to the end of a much finer arm that spiral in to the eastern side of the core. A similar arm comes off the western side and ends in what appears to be a bunch of star clusters or is it debris from something the galaxy is digesting? NED lists one of these, up by where the heavy arm meets the much finer arm coming from the eastern side of the core, as a separate galaxy but with the same redshift. Even on the Sloan image, I can't see it as anything different than many other such star clouds in the area. The galaxy is in southeastern Canis Minor about 470 million light-years distant.

The UGC says of it: "Strongly deformed spiral pattern, bright arc in northwest, eccentric nuclear region, no disturbing object visible." The bright arc being the heavy arm in Arp's terminology. While there is no "disturbing object" in the area the galaxy is part of ZwCl 0806.8+0514, a cluster of 220 galaxies in a medium compact cluster some 73 minutes of arc across according to NED. The cluster is centered about 5 minutes south of my image's southern edge. That means my image is well within its boundaries covering only part of its northern region. With that many galaxies, it wouldn't surprise me if one wasn't the cause of IC 498's apparent indigestion from eating it.

IC 498 was discovered by Rudolf Spitaler on November 11, 1888 apparently using the 27" refractor at Wein University in Vienna on November 11, 1888. He found 64 IC objects while at the university, most of them from 1891 to 1892. Though 54 are galaxies, one, IC 1470, is an emission nebula. The rest are dubious at best. One is a single star, four double stars, two triple stars, yet another a quadruple star and the last can't be identified with anything in the sky. Seems he was a bit over anxious to find objects. In fact, it was a race between astronomers of that era to find these objects. IC 1440, his only emission nebula, was discovered by Barnard only one day later. In the pressure to find one before someone else, it seems on nights of less than ideal seeing stars became deep sky objects, especially when in tight groups of two to four. A single star at the magnitude limit for the night can also create the illusion of an extended object. Even today's photographic searches make mistakes, just not as obvious as those of the days of visual astronomy.

Speaking of conditions they were awful for this one. I tried on three different nights, all of which were of 3.5" seeing or worse. While the third night was better for seeing transparency was awful. I ended up including 9 of the luminance images taken as including just the 4 from the best seeing night didn't go very deep at all. By including even those down to 4" seeing I managed to get my usual depth but at the cost of resolution. I used the three best of 6 color frames taken those nights for each color. I threw out those of such poor quality they added only noise to the final result when included.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=9x10' RGB=3x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for IC0498

IC0527

My original object of interest was IC 527 due to an entry in the UGC stating "Smooth faint disk, no spiral pattern." Yet the POSS image showed a very obvious spiral pattern and hints of fainter outer arms disconnected from the disk. When I took my framing image interesting galaxies were near the western edge so I move the field west to pick them up. Started the imaging run and went to bed. I went to process it weeks later and found I was in trouble. One totally useless, one weak and the two "good" ones were weaker than normal. Conditions had to have gone south soon after I started. Yet the color frames were all good. Since I didn't see this until too late to retake it I decided to make a pseudo color image from the three sort of usable L frames and all the RGB frames. Thus it loses a good magnitude or more and is noisy but at least I had something to work with. It's back on the to-do list for next year as it is full of interacting galaxies. The field is located in southeastern Lynx. Edit: Somehow I've never gotten back to this field. Also, this illustrates why I don't bin color as most imagers do. I'd have lost not only depth but also resolution had I binned the color data when using it to salvage poor luminance data. Contrary to popular opinion I don't find I need more time for color data because of this.

It turns out IC 527 may be one of the less interesting galaxies in the field. But for its strange arm structure, it is otherwise rather normal looking. NED says it is S? with no mention of a very obvious bar. Seligman does see it and classifies it as SBc?. It was discovered by Lewis Swift on April 19, 1890. IC 527 it is about 320 to 330 million light-years distant by redshift.

To the northwest is PGC 025786, a highly disturbed Sb spiral with one arm pulled out to the south and a faint plume to the southeast.

Well to the west is normal NGC 2759 classed as S0-: by NED and E/S0 by Seligman. It has a redshift that puts it slightly further away than the other two but I suspect this is more due to its velocity in the group rather than a real distance difference. It was discovered by William Herschel on March 30, 1787. It isn't in either Herschel 400 observing program.

Heading south from NGC 2759 we come to PGC 025734 listed by NED as SB(s)b pec. It certainly is peculiar all right. It has a long straight plume to the southwest that suddenly broadens out and curves back toward the galaxy before fading away along the east side of the galaxy. This curving part carries its own galaxy designation at NED. See the annotated image for details. This galaxy is also 320 million light-years distant. Is it messed up because it interacted with PGC 025786? The plume seems to point back to this galaxy and it too is disturbed.

Quite a few other galaxies in the image are also about 320 million light-years distant indicating this is a rather large group but I never found any galaxy cluster or group that included them all. I didn't check outside the bounds of the image, however.

Going back east from PGC 025734 brings us to the double galaxy PGC 025760. These two are obviously interacting with large plumes coming from the eastern galaxy. Only the western member, ASK 206485.0 has a redshift measurement at NED. That puts it some 1.35 billion light-years distant. How I wish this pair was much closer. It likely would be a spectacular crash scene.

Go south and a bit west from PGC 025760 and an even more distant pair is seen. Only the eastern member has any redshift data. NED puts it, ASK 267925.0, at some 2.15 billion light-years. I assume the two are interacting since they appear to be sharing a common halo of stars. Unfortunately, due to conditions, this is hard to see. I checked the Sloan image with confirms the shared halo.

In the upper right corner is the flat galaxy FGC 841 which NED lists as an Sc spiral with a possible DANS core. What is that you ask? I had to look it up. It stands for Dwarf Amorphous Nuclear Starburst--Introduced by Salzer et al. ([1989]), they show very similar spectroscopic properties to SBN objects, but with alpha luminosities lower than StarBurst Nuclear galaxies.

Three quasars are shown in the annotated image. All are shown as candidate quasars in one place but under the general heading of actual quasars. All have large spectroscopic redshifts indicating great distance. Since it is quite likely they really are quasars that's how I've labeled them in the annotated image.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=3x10+RGB2x10', RGB=2x10' (they get double duty), STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for IC0527

IC0528 HCG36

IC 0528 is the main galaxy in the HCG 36 4 galaxy group. Hickson chose his compact clusters by their appearance on the Palomar Observatory Sky Servey images. They had to meet his criteria for being compact, having at least 4 galaxies whose brightness had to fall within a rather tight range. Note they didn't have to be a true group by distance. Only that they appeared compact from our line of sight. This is a good example with 2 of the four having a distance of about 710 million light-years, another 400 million and the most obvious, IC 0528 is only 190 million light-years distant by redshift. A fifth galaxy looks like it should have made the group but was too faint to make the cut. Oddly it is about the same distance of IC 0528 so by distance there are 2 galaxies at about 710 million light-years, two at about 190 to 180 and one in between at 400 million light-years. Still, as seen from our location in space they appear close together though by size it would appear 4 are about the same distance with IC 0528 being much closer. Actually, by redshift, the smallest is the closest.

What I find interesting about IC 0528 and why it went on my to-do list is the outer ring appears to be in a different plane, tilted with respect to the inner part of the galaxy. Is this real or an illusion? If the latter it is a darned good illusion. I found nothing in the literature on this.

The group is located in western Cancer a half degree from the ecliptic. This explains why there are 5 asteroids in the image. While they aren't confined to the ecliptic like the planets they do all cross it and the majority never stray more than about 15 degrees from it. So when imaging near the ecliptic, expect to pick up asteroids.

The field is full of distant galaxies. I've shown the redshift distance to all which NED showed a redshift value. They are very tiny, star-like, faint objects. You may need to enlarge the image to see those down in the 23rd magnitude range. But there are two that don't fit. On the far right about the middle of the frame is a near 23rd magnitude galaxy only 59 million light-years distant rather than 4 to 6 billion light-years the others are. It is a really tiny dwarf galaxy. I measure its size at 1,200 light-years. Now that's a dwarf galaxy! Or the redshift is very wrong. The other misfit is in the upper left corner. There you find what I'd have said was a nearby, blue, dwarf galaxy. Problem is NED puts it at nearly 7 billion light-years distant. Farther out than any other galaxy in the image, all of which are near star-like points. At a z of 0.813, it would be severely reddened yet is blue. Stars blue enough to survive such a redshift would be very short lived. To have an entire galaxy that way seemed beyond belief to me. Also, its size would be over 600,000 light-years in size. Something appeared very wrong. Then I noticed an "essential note" at NED. These are usually of no interest. They sometimes carry a different redshift than NED reports but doesn't think correct. It gives a distance of only 400 million light-years. That gives a size of 35 million light-years. Now everything makes sense. Why NED chose the obviously questionable redshift over the apparently correct one I don't know. It sure had me going for a while.

There are a few galaxies I'd like to know a bit more about. I labeled one edge on, the apparently flat galaxy at the top, toward the left edge but couldn't give it a distance estimate. You'll see others but like the one I labeled, they only have positional names and not much more at NED so I didn't label them. The image was getting rather cluttered as it is.

The naming citation for the one named asteroid reads:
(37044) Papymarcel = 2000 UE29
Marcel Alphonse Merlin (b. 1922) is the father of the discoverer. Now celebrating his eightieth birthday, he was the principal artisan in the construction of the discoverer's private observatory.

IC 0528 was discovered by Stephane Javelle on December 16, 1893.

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

Related Designations for IC0528 HCG36

IC0529

IC 529 is a nice spiral galaxy in Camelopardalis that might fit Arp's category of spiral galaxies with three arms. It is about 110 million light-years distant both by redshift and the median value of 17 other distance measurements, mostly Tully-Fisher. That gives it a size of about 125,000 light-years, a good size spiral. It was discovered by William Denning, an English astronomer in 1890 using a 10 inch Newtonian reflector, much like many amateurs of today use. He found 18 IC objects, 15 galaxies, two open clusters and one planetary nebula between 1890 and 1892.

Arp considered three armed spirals to deserve their own category but then only put three in it. The third arm in all appears more like an arm segment as does the third arm here though in this case, the segment is longer and brighter than either arm coming out of the core.

The field contains the rather nearby Abell 765 galaxy cluster. NED lists it as being 30 minutes across which is larger than my field though it appears all members are in the left half of the image. The label for it is centered on the position NED gives for the cluster. It is listed as richness class 2 which is Abell lingo for clusters with 80 to 129 galaxies. NED classes it as Morphology class III (BM). This is using the Bautz-Morgan classification scheme in which III is midway between a cluster dominated by a huge cD elliptical galaxy and one with large spiral galaxies and having no "remarkable" members. NED puts the cluster at nearly 1.7 billion light-years though all the members NED has a redshift distance for are listed as being a bit more distant, more like 1.8 billion light-years. The few galaxies NED had redshift measurements on all appear to be members of the cluster but for IC 529 making it a rather lonely galaxy, at least at my image scale. This far, north 73° 45.5', redshift data is usually rather hard to come by. Thus there are a lot of galaxies not included in the annotated image as they often weren't even in NED, at least as galaxies and if they were had no useful data.

Seeing was highly variable creating major issues when it came to color data. Red was taken last while conditions were deteriorating since it is supposed to be least bothered. But during the exposure seeing created some nasty distortions the likes of which I've never seen. It set off an alarm waking me so I came out and watched the red get clobbered. I tried to process as much of the red flares out as possible but some still remain. Fortunately, the luminance was taken under somewhat better conditions but oddly some stars were randomly elongated. The temperature dropped from -18C to -33C while this was taken. I assume that sudden drop had a lot to do with these issues. RegiStar worked overtime trying to correct the image scale of every frame. I picked one in the middle of the temperature drop as the reference. I don't know if that was the best choice or not. I've never dealt with such a drop in only 2 hours before. As I was running the camera at -35C it finished at 1% cooling power! Often that dropped to 0% but the darks worked well so I got away with it.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10' (blue the best 2 of 4), STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for IC0529

IC0565

This field is located in western Leo about 2.5 degrees north of the ecliptic. Thus you might expect several asteroids in the image. I did. Only one 20th magnitude one showed up. The two galaxies in the image are about 280 to 290 million light-years distant. Assuming they are at about the same distance their angular separation is about 1.5 million light-years making them closer than we are to M31. The difference is likely greater though both seem somewhat disturbed.

My reason for taking this field was the flat galaxy FGC 0945 more commonly known as IC 0565. There's no issue with the FGC catalog entry but it appears only it was seen and entered into the IC catalog. Later its elliptical companion was included in some IC catalogs but not all. Also, NED has the flat galaxy cataloged as Sbc one place and on the same page says it is Scd. I found it only as Sbc except for this NED entry.

There is some question in some places as to the elliptical companion saying it may or may not be a true companion. Though most note the warped nature of the flat galaxy and say it may be due to the elliptical galaxy. When was the redshift of these two determined. Today they have very similar redshifts which would indicate they are likely interacting.

The other galaxy is hiding behind a rather bright star. It is UGC 5234. It is a rather low surface brightness galaxy making it difficult for visual observers explaining how it missed being in the IC catalog. Its arm structure is a bit odd indicating it may be partly due to interaction with some other galaxy. Was it IC 0565? I found nothing much on this galaxy.

IC 0565 was discovered by Stephane Javelle on December 16, 1893. The other two escaped his eyepiece it would seem.

In annotating this field I ran into some very odd issues with NED's database. One of the strangest concerns a rather faint edge on galaxy north of IC 0565. NED shows two entries for it at slightly different positions but well within it bright outline. One says it is magnitude 22.6 and smaller than any star disk in the Sloan image of this field but gives a distance similar to IC 565 and UGC 5234. Something that small at that magnitude can't be seen in the Sloan image thanks to the much brighter galaxy. The other entry carries no redshift, a size that fits my image and a magnitude of 17.6, also about right. Figuring some mixup I assigned the redshift to the galaxy not the invisible point source that makes no sense. Many galaxies with magnitudes easily visible in the image turned out to be much fainter. Some barely visible in the Sloan image. Others with very faint magnitudes were easily visible in both my and the Sloan image. Why the errors that could exceed 3 magnitudes I don't know. Yes, a larger galaxy of the same magnitude will appear fainter but in these cases that can't account for more than a 0.3 or so magnitude difference, not three. Knowing about the limit due to lousy transparency this night I set the cutoff for searching for things to annotate at the appropriate point but when I started finding "bright" galaxies being invisible and those supposedly at my limit "big and bright" I had to go back and lower my magnitude limit. This resulted in a lot of false entries that sucked up my time. But it also picked up many I would have missed. I hope this isn't going to be the norm for NED.

The one faint asteroid at magnitude 20 is near the western edge near the NW corner of the image. It was caught shortly after reverting back to normal motion after a period of retrograde motion as we passed it. As it was still finishing the loop it moves very slowly and at an angle to the northeast.

Due to the poor seeing and transparency, I didn't prepare a cropped image at a greater image scale than my usual 1" per pixel as even that was too much for the night.

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

Related Designations for IC0565

IC0592

IC 592 and IC 593 are the largest galaxies in a group of galaxies about 300 million light-years distant in central Sextans. IC 592 is classified as Sbc and SABc? by Seligman. I can't say I see the bar. Assuming its distance is 290 million light-years which is what its redshift says, it is about 76,000 light-years across. It was discovered by Stephane Javelle on March 21, 1893 and is #665 in his catalog. Rather typical in size for a spiral but its arm structure isn't all that typical. It has two major arms and a rather odd arm segment on the eastern side. The two main arms are full of blue star clouds. The brightest is on the far eastern edge of the arm segment and looks almost like a star in my image. Unfortunately seeing was very poor when this was taken. It was put back onto the retake immediately list but weeks of clouds forced me to work with what bad data I had. Not only that but the 7.5 magnitude K5 giant star just to the southwest cast a huge red glare over most of the image since this was taken through rather dense, high clouds. More on conditions in a bit.

IC 593 to the east was discovered the same night by Javelle and is #666 on his list. With its even stranger arm structure, I'd say was devilish to explain but considering it's number in his catalog I won't. Still, it is odd with the one arm coming off the oval ring around its core. NED classifies it as S? while Seligman says S(rs)bc?. To my eye in both my image and the Sloan image it appears to have a faint vertical bar but since no one includes it in the classification it might be an illusion. Redshift puts it also at 290 million light-years. I measure its size as 65,000 light-years. I measure its separation from IC 592 at 309.7" of arc in my image which gives a minimum separation of the two of 435,000 light-years. Close enough I'd expect to see some hints of interaction. That may explain the pulled out north arm of IC 593. Likely they are somewhat further apart with one being more distant than the other. How much more is the question.

Scattered across the image are many other, mostly dwarf galaxies at about the same distance as these two. Also, a third large member is well out of my frame to the east. There was no way I could fit it in without leaving out the other two.

In making the annotated image I ran into a lot of odd apparent errors in the positions of some galaxies. Often there real position was well outside the error bars sited at NED. An example is LEDA 1093733 to the north. The position at NED points to a star that is at the southeast end of the galaxy. Since that is what NED points to and says is accurate to 0.5" I've drawn a line to the star. But NED gives the size as matching that of the fuzzy galaxy rather than the star. Several others with no excuse such as the star, in this case, are in the image. For example, LEDA 88605's position in NED was a supposed to be accurate to 2.5" but was about 10 seconds to the north where nothing is located. Putting the coordinates into the POSS server or the Sloan server shows the error quite clearly so it isn't just my measurement which is often accurate to 0.01" for point source quasars.

As mentioned conditions were awful for this image. My system first took it to the east of the meridian then to the west until clouds totally shut me down. Out of some 30 frames taken I used the 4 best luminance images. Color frames were so bad I could only use one of each color even though at least 4 were taken for each. Red was really a problem in that the high clouds sprayed a wildly variant red gradient across each red frame. I choose parts of 3 to make a single pasted together frame. Green was so weak as to be unusable. All I could do was use it as a framework to create a pseudo green frame. Add to this that seeing was 3.5" to 4" this image came out better than I expected. Though the very bad seeing created some wonky shaped stars. Probably partly due to tube currents as I never expected to get anything this night I'd not opened the roof to cool things down and began the first luminance frame only 5 minutes after opening the roof. That always creates some tube currents distorting star shapes.

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

Related Designations for IC0592

IC0603

IC 603 is a ring galaxy in Sextans about a quarter of a billion light-years distant. It is classed as (R)SB(r)a: so is a barred spiral with two ring structures, and outer and inner ring. The outer one is very slightly blue while the inner one quite red. At about the same redshift and thus likely about the same distance is MCG-01-26-040 another galaxy with a ring like structure though that isn't mentioned in its classification system. It is listed as simply SBa. I'd say SB(r)a as the arms off the bar form a pseudo ring in my image at least. This is an area of the sky not covered by the Sloan survey so I expected to find little on the other galaxies in the field but was pleasantly surprised to find it seems rather well covered. While many of the galaxies are listed only by their positions in various catalogs some have catalog names that aren't just coordinates. Those are listed by their LEDA number or other designation when available. It was discovered by Stephane Javelle on April 10, 1893.

There are three asteroids in the image, all quite faint as this image doesn't go as deep as most and was severely hurt by poor seeing. Even after rather strong deconvolution (for me) the stars are pretty fuzzy. This is because a cold front was rolling in. The front caused other problems besides poor seeing. The temperature dropped 10°C during the exposures. This sudden rapid temperature drop of course caused the poor seeing but it also sent the ambient temperature plunging below my camera's cooling setting which was -40C The last luminance frame was unregulated. I tried many different scaling factors but never could get a clean image. It hardly mattered because the sudden drop also created a nasty tube current. The Luminance was taken last which was when the temperature plummeted. The first luminance frame had nice round stars. They were slightly wonky in the second frame and by the third had horrid tails coming off a flat bottom. The fourth frame as very severe with these tails. I'd likely not used it even if the temperature had been regulated. Note this was taken in early March and we were still getting temperatures below -40°C. What a winter. Anyway I didn't know of this problem until I went to process it months after it was taken and too late to retake the luminance. I tried pseudo luminance using the color frames plus two luminance frames but that cost even more faint detail so I went with the flat stars that leaving in the third luminance created. While the bottoms are flat the image was inverted so the flat side was the top when taken, right where the hot air went, if you can have "hot air" at below -40°C. The combination of only three frames and bad seeing really limited how faint I could go with this one and how much processing I could do to pull detail out the galaxies. Another for the reshoot list that likely will never be retaken due to so many first time objects still on the list.

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

Related Designations for IC0603

IC0614

IC 614 is a ring galaxy about 480 million light-years distant in the constellation of Sextans. At that distance, it is about 115,000 light-years in diameter. It and many more galaxies in the field are likely members of the WBL 272 galaxy cluster which is listed in NED as having 33 members and a distance of 530 million light-years. It seems to have a double population with some about 420 million light-years away and some in the 530 million light-year range with some like IC 614 scattered in between. There seems to be another cluster at 810 to 890 million light-years. They are likely members of the MZ 03849 galaxy group at 820 million light-years.

I found little on IC 614 other than it is a Seyfert 2 galaxy. It is likely that its Seyfert core and ring structure are the result of a collision or merger in the not too distant past. Unfortunately seeing was awful this night and much of the fine detail in the ring was lost. The red frames were unusable so I retook them on another night that was no better. I ended up using one from each night but the results aren't very good. Yet another for the reshoot list that likely will never happen. I was taking red last on such nights as it is supposedly less bothered by seeing. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out well for me.

The galaxy was discovered on May 3, 1893 by Stephane Javelle who is responsible for much of the IC catalog having discovered over 2000 nebula of which over 1400 are IC entries using a 30" refractor at Nice Observatory. He died at age 52 in 1917. I wonder if he was a victim of the 1917 flu epidemic that killed millions worldwide? He was an accountant before becoming an astronomer. Being a long retired CPA I have to like this guy.

Quite a few objects are identified in the annotated image but none are quasars for some reason and most are rather close with only three over 2 billion light-years distant. One asteroid is in the image to the lower right. It was virtually at the end of its retrograde motion so moved only a few seconds of arc. I'd have mistaken it for an anonymous galaxy except its position is exactly matched the predicted position and nothing is seen there in the POSS plates.

The largest galaxy in the image is CGCG 009-042, a massive elliptical at 430 million light-years. At that distance, it is over 160,000 light-years across. Its gravity may be anchoring this group to some extent.

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

Related Designations for IC0614