IC1158

IC 1158 is a low surface brightness spiral galaxy in Serpens Caput that is about 94 million light-years distant by redshift and slightly more distant, 98, million light-years by the median of 11 Tully Fisher measurements that ranged from 63 to 144 million light-years. It is classified as SAB(r)c: though the bar is very short. It shows mostly as a slightly elongated nucleus in my image but can be clearly seen in the far higher resolution Sloan image. Being almost on the celestial equator nights of good seeing at this altitude are hard to come by this far north. It was a night of good transparency by poor seeing. It was discovered on July 17, 1890 by Lewis Swift.

Somehow this object found itself on my to-do list but I find nothing in my notes of objects on the list about it. I have no idea why I decided to take it. Note made after a quick look at the frames the next morning said "Nice spiral but screwed up background -- gradients? clouds? dawn?" The background was oddly mottled. I was about to process it out when I checked heavily stretched DSS and Sloan images. They showed it was real and mostly blue. I picked it up "better" than either for some reason. Since it shows faintly in these images when stretched and the bright areas match with mine I not only left it in but boosted it as much as I dared with my limited 40 minutes of luminance. What is causing it I don't know. The galactic latitude is only 38 degrees, rather low for IFN and IFN is usually rather white rather than blue.

Sloan has covered this area but its data is not yet in NED so I had no distance or useful data on any other galaxy in the image. Nor were there any asteroids in the frame. For those reasons, I didn't prepare an annotated image. The luminance data was taken into dawn hence my concern that it might have created the mottling. But when it showed in the color frames taken a different day and before dawn I ruled that out.

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

Related Designations for IC1158

IC1192

IC 1194 is a member of the Hercules Galaxy Cluster on its eastern edge. I missed picking it up when I imaged the heart of the cluster due to my FOV being too small. Like several other members of the cluster, including some on the western edge of this image, it has large plumes apparently due to interaction with other members of the cluster. NED classifies it as SA(s)0+ pec. While the bright region of the galaxy is pretty average in size at 60,000 light-years in diameter its plumes extend its diameter to 385,000 light-years at its assumed distance of 530 million light-years. IC 1182 on the western edge of my image has a smaller plume. Its bright diameter is much larger than IC 1194 at a bit over 100,000 light-years at its redshift distance of 470 million light-years. With the plumes (mostly to the north) its size grows to 225,000 light-years. The brightest plumes belong to Arp 172 (IC 1178 and IC 1181) in the lower right corner. At their redshift distance, the plums extend to about 285,000 light-years. At least in the case of Arp 172, we know the plumes are caused by the interaction of the two galaxies. What caused the plumes in the case of IC 1194 and IC 1182 is more difficult to determine. I found nothing in the literature to help. They may be due to a long ago merger with another galaxy. All three were discovered by Stephane Javelle on August 13, 1892.

The annotated image lists all galaxies that might be a member of the cluster by name and redshift distance. NED gives a distance of about 500 million light-years for the cluster itself, also known as Abell 2151 though the redshifts range nearly 50,000 light-years either side of this figure. This would indicate rather high velocities of the members, maybe enough that some will be kicked out of the cluster. That depends on the dark matter mass I suppose. In any case, the high dynamics make it quite likely that interactions like these would happen.

At the bottom center of the image is PGC 05170. It appears quite messed up. NED also lists a galaxy ABELL 2151[HKT95] 4028 to its southwest about where there's a condensation. Problem is its position is vague (+/- 5 seconds). That's not enough to reach the core of PGC 05170 but the condensation on its southwest side is within that error bar. NED classes this second galaxy as Sdm. It lists PGC 05170 as SdI. That would seem to indicate they could be talking about the same galaxy rather than 2. I've annotated these as two different galaxies but they may be the same one. Several times in the frame NED had two entries for obviously the same galaxy. Usually one had a large error bar that sometimes wasn't large enough to include the galaxy. I listed only the accurate designation except for this entry as it was too ambiguous to take that path.

Also, several parts of IC 1182 were indicated by NED to be c, d, and E. They were listed as part of the galaxy though appear to be separate galaxies. For part c there's a fuzzy patch just below a bright blue star-like object. The coordinates match the star-like object rather than the fuzzy blob. While my resolution is poor at the edge of the field its PSF seems to indicate it is a star rather than a galaxy. But NED says the position error is only 0.5" of arc which isn't sufficient to reach the blob running just below it. It looks to me to be a star on the Sloan image as well. I drew the line to the star-like object as it is at the indicated position. For a major field, I was surprised by all the ambiguity identifying the galaxies.

Again, due to weather, I had to throw out 6 luminance frames and 4 frames for each color. Conditions were poor for those I did use so this one doesn't go as deep as I wanted. Green was still very suspect and weak. I used some tricks to try and restore green to a proper balance. I think I was rather successful. Another for the reshoot list I suppose -- eventually.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=8x10', RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for IC1192

IC1229

IC 1230 is a pair of galaxies along with two others that appear to be in a common large halo. Only the northern galaxy has any distance data. That puts it 640 million light-years distant in very northern Hercules. The other two sharing the northern part of the halo carry rather the obtuse designations of SDSSCGB 08814.02 and .03 left to right (east to west). This is because the group of 5, these two the blue spiral and IC 1230 (the pair) is the SDSSCGB 08814 galaxy group. Only 4 are in the common halo. How many are actually part of the same physical group I can't determine. The halo is about 350,000 light-years across in my image assuming the 640 million light-year distance. The blue spiral would be 90,000 light-years across if part of the group. So its size does fit with it being a true member. But it would fit at half that size and distance as well. That doesn't help much. Still, the huge halo does seem to argue that the 4 elliptical-like galaxies are physically related and have contributed stars to the huge halo.

To the north is IC 1229. It is in Draco. In fact, the boundary line is just at the north edge of the IC 1230 galaxy group's halo. So about half my image is in Draco and half in Hercules. As with the other galaxies but for the larger member of the IC 1230 pair IC 1229 has no distance data nor does NED classify it.

Both IC 1229 and IC 1230 were found by Lewis Swift on September 18, 1890. He described 1230 as "...most extremely faint, small round, very difficult, southeastern of 2"." I can't fathom what that 2" is in reference to. The two members of IC 1230 are 8" apart not two and if he meant two minutes then IC 1229 is 3 minutes distant not 2 but 1230 is southeast of 1229. Now, where are those folks who talk to the dead when you need them to solve such mysteries?

Oddly the only galaxy to have a classification at NED was the flat galaxy FGC 2064 which is listed as Sc. No distance data, however. The annotated image lists three galaxy clusters in the image I could identify by its Bright Cluster Galaxy. Only the clusters had redshift data, never the BCG and that was photographic which can be rather fuzzy at these distances. I didn't note anything else. They had no useful data and were listed only by their coordinates in the 2MASS and SDSS. No asteroid appeared this far north.

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

Related Designations for IC1229

IC1262

IC 1262 anchors a small cluster of galaxies. I've mentioned before I sometimes get requests, this one came from Sakib Rasool, a name I'm mentioning a lot of late. Not often do these make it onto my to-do list but this one did since the cluster contains the rather wacky galaxy IC 1263 to its north. As is obvious, I have a penchant for these. Maybe it's because my ham call sign, given me at random by the FCC over 55 years ago, is WA0CKY (the third character is a zero so my dad said the FCC knew I was a wacky nothing -- he was joking, I think). This field is located in Hercules not far from M92. The cluster is anchored by the elliptical cD galaxy IC 1262. Redshift puts it at about 440 million light-years from us. Though the distance to various members varies quite a bit due to rather high orbital motions of the cluster members. The cluster goes by many names, IC 1262 group, Zwicky 8239, WBL 643 and many others. Of course, the one I was told was Zwicky 8239 which isn't recognized by NED. Fortunately, Simbad did know of it. We have created quite a tower of Babel with these many catalog names for the same object, often with slightly different positions due to which galaxies they include and exclude.

IC 1263 is classed as SBab. I'd have expected a ring designation but apparently not. A note at NED indicates it may be interacting with IC 1262. I see no sign of any distortion to IC 1262 so rather doubt this connection. Redshift puts it at 391 million light-years. A rather large difference for interacting galaxies. If they really are at about the same distance (or were), the interaction would have been very brief due to the velocity difference. Still, IC 1263 is a very interesting looking galaxy.

Cut off at the bottom of the image is IC 1264. NED classes it as E/S0. It seems to have a plume or weak spiral arm. Is that due to the small companion to its east-northeast? The two share the same UGC number, 10904 but this happens with totally unrelated galaxies all the time and is meaningless. They do have somewhat similar redshifts.

All three were discovered by Lewis Swift on June 19, 1890.

The annotated image shows the distances to all galaxies for which they are available, that's nearly all of them listed in NED. Most without distance measurements are not in NED. Most that are, are in the 2MASX IR catalog though a few are from other more obscure catalogs. Those few from somewhat major catalogs are listed by that identification. Those from the 2MASX and other lesser known ones like the Galaxy Index Number and NOAO Fundamental Plane (NFP) that use only location as the designation are shown by redshift look back distance only.

As usual, some blue galaxies are totally omitted. I marked the brightest with a question mark. Really blue galaxies often meet this fate. I still don't know why. Several others are very obvious in the image. I can understand they often don't have strong enough IR emissions to make the 2MASX which constitutes the majority of identified galaxies but I'd think some of the other catalogs would pick them up. They must not meet their entrance requirements.

All measured galaxies seem to be members of the NGC 1262 group. Many of the rest likely are as well. Some though are likely far more distant. The distant ones are likely the most reddened ones but that can be deceiving.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for IC1262

IC1279

IC 1279/2MFGC 14240 is an Sb spiral in Hercules about 280 to 290 million light-years distant. The first estimate is based on a mean Tully-Fisher measurement and the latter on cosmological redshift. Quite good agreement. Assuming the 280 million light-year distance it is a huge spiral galaxy some 195,000 light-years across. It is also considered a flat galaxy but not flat enough for the FGC. Instead it is in the 2 Micron catalog of flat galaxies as 2MFGC 14240. This is what put it on my "To-Do" list. It doesn't have much if any central bulge and its disk appears slightly warped to me. With no known companions this may be due to galaxies it ate to get so large. While there are many other galaxies in the field, some of which may be small members of its group only one other galaxy has a redshift value and that puts it far beyond this galaxy. Thus there's no way to know if this is a lonely giant galaxy or not. It was discovered on October 18m, 1887 by Lewis Swift.

The other IC galaxy in the image is the galaxy pair to the east of IC 1279 which is IC 1281. Only the northern galaxy has a redshift value that I could find which puts it some 600 million light-years from us. NED considers IC 1281 to be a galaxy pair with the somewhat fainter and smaller galaxy just to the south as the other member. Seligman and SIMBAD however limits IC 1281 to only the northern galaxy. I have no idea who is correct here. Without redshift I can't say if they are truly a pair or not. The northern galaxy was discovered by Lewis Swift on May 28, 1889. Some sources such as the second IC say IC 1281 is just a duplicate for IC 1279. This apparently is an erroneous comment.

There are several interesting looking galaxies in the field but neither NED nor SIMBAD has any useful information on them. I did crop the 0.8" per pixel cropped image to pick up the more interesting ones. The spiral to the upper left is listed in both the IRAS catalog as a bright IR galaxy and in the GALEX catalog of Ultra violet sources. So maybe a starburst galaxy but that is only a surmise on my part. The pair of red galaxies at the bottom of the cropped image are both from the 2MASS IR catalog and no other. There's no way to know if they are a true pair or just line of sight galaxies unfortunately. Without any information for all the other galaxies in the image but for their coordinates, not even a magnitude for most of them, I didn't prepare an annotated image.

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

Related Designations for IC1279

IC1291

IC 1291 is a rather disturbed looking spiral galaxy in southern Draco just north of Lyra. It is classified SB(s)dm? according to NED and SBdm pec by Seligman. Redshift puts it a bit over 80 million light-years distant while a single Tully-Fisher measurement says about 100 million light-years. One paper mentioning it says 85 million light-years though doesn't say how this was determined. Assuming the 85 million light-year figure it is about 52,000 light-years across. It's spiral arms are very different both in visual light and at radio frequencies tracing the non-ionized Hydrogen. Is it naturally this way or the product of an interaction? I found nothing on this but will vote that it has been disturbed by an interaction or something it ate. It was discovered by Lewis Swift on June 5, 1891.

The only other galaxy in the frame with redshift data is the ragged looking one to the north, MCG +08-34-005. It's redshift puts it at 89 million light-years so may be a true companion. Look closely and you'll see it has a very faint extension to the east southeast and a shorter one on the other side running to an orange star. Including these possible tidal features it is some 36,000 light-years long. Using only the obvious bright region it is only 13,000 by 3,000 light-years in size. Include the plumes and it would make the Flat Galaxy's 7:1 ratio test. But it's not in that catalog. NED makes no attempt to classify it. Could it be the cause of IC 1291's odd shape? Seems quite possible to me but then galaxies can just look strange for no known reason.

NED lists IC 1291 as UGC 11283 and MGC +08-34-005 as UGC 11283c. So I naively assumed there must be a UGC 11283a and UGC 11283b but NED says neither are in its data base. Yet A note at NED from the UGC at NED for IC 1291 indicates it is part of a trio of galaxies. One is the MGC galaxy and the other 2MASX J18332904+4917066 the small galaxy about due west 3.8 minutes of arc. NED has no redshift data for it. To me it is likely a very distant background galaxy but then looks can be deceiving.

6.1 minutes south is LEDA 2335645. To me it is a more likely companion than the other. Though it too looks more distant to me. Still it makes a better companion to my eye. Maybe the UGC has a 6 minute cut off and it is just over that? I have no idea. In any case neither of these appear to be UGC 11283 a or b. Closer but fainter is 2MASX J18341025+4919028 to the northeast at only 3.7 minutes, closer than any of these. Neither of these made the UGC so that may be why they weren't considered companions.

With only the two galaxies having redshift data and no asteroids present I didn't bother to make an annotated image. In doing the asteroid search at the Minor Planet Center I note that their asteroid count is now just over 1 million. It had been stuck at the mid 800,000 level for some time. While some of those are "lost" that's still a major milestone for finding these little guys. Many millions to go I suspect.

I found one HST image taken in red light (606nm filter) which I've included.

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

Related Designations for IC1291

IC1310

IC 1310/Berkeley 50 is an open cluster in Cygnus. Being near the dust band of the Milky Way it is reddened by nearly one magnitude according to WEBDA. That likely explains its lack of blue appearing stars. WEBDA puts it a distance of 2100 parsecs (6800 light-years and gives it an age of a quarter of a billion years. The only other paper I found on it is behind a paywall so unavailable. Oddly WEBDA came up blank when I asked about it under its IC number but had it under its less well-known Berkeley designation. Though its position was so far off their image of it just catches the eastern half on the very edge of the frame. Most catalogs give a position a bit east of its real position but not this far off. The cluster was discovered by Thomas Henry Espinall Compton Espin, a British astronomer, on September 19, 1893. He discovered 18 previously unknown IC objects using the 17.25" Calver reflector from his private observatory.

SIMBAD lists another cluster [FRS2007] 0199 110 seconds west of the position for IC 1310. But then SIMBAD puts IC 1310 about 50 seconds east of its true position which makes its entry for the second cluster about 60 seconds west of IC 1310. That puts the real cluster about midway between the two positions. SIMBAD doesn't give error bars for position. I'm going to assume these both apply to the same cluster. NED only lists IC 1310 and gives a 10" error bar for position.

The dark nebula on the left side of my image is LDN 858. Much of the field has a faint H alpha nebula running through it. Color is weak, however. In many color shots of the region, it is more neutral in color. I likely pushed color saturation further than most, maybe too much in trying to bring out color in it. While much of Cygnus is awash in H alpha light, none of the nebulae listed in SIMBAD extended into this frame though several LBN regions are nearby that appear to be brighter regions of this huge cloud.

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

Related Designations for IC1310

IC1311

I imaged this one back in 2008 but seeing wasn't great and my processing far worse. I was going to combine the two but seeing was so much better for this one for the little gain of the added time I went with the new data only.

IC 1311 is described in the IC catalog as an open star cluster with nebulosity. Most of the nebula is to the east and out my frame. To get the extent of the nebulosity involved I would need a wide angle scope capable of seeing many square degrees of sky so I concentrated on the cluster. It is located in Cygnus about 4000 light-years away. The very dark nebula LDN 885 is quite obvious on the right edge of my image. IC 1311 was discovered by Thomas Espin on October 6, 1893.

What I missed seeing the first time is the small bluish object above LBN 885 and below a streak of H alpha nebulosity. It showed faintly in my first attempt. With my more experienced processing, I see it now is mostly surrounded by a red ring. This reminded me of some planetary nebula. At first, I was coming up blank for a planetary at these coordinates. Then I found this 2006 paper: http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2006/09/aa4057-05.pdf It is about hunting for unknown open clusters but it also turned up a few possible planetary nebula. This is one of them, Patchick 6. Patchick is the name of the astronomer who found it on the POSS plates. After looking at it on the POSS plates I have to say Dana Patchick has very good eyesight as it was barely visible to my eye. It carries another designation DSH J2009.6+4114 which is the only one that worked with the POSS server I used. Its coordinates are 20h 09m 40.90s +41d 14' 43.1". It would make a good narrow-band target for those with a 1" per pixel or greater image scale and seeing to match.

I've included a full-size crop of Patchick 6. Besides Patchick 6 in the center, it contains a mystery object. Yeah, it has me stumped. Your turn to help me figure out what it is. Look right of Patchick 6 almost to the edge. There's a very odd colored greenish orange blob. Looking at the POSS 2 plates it shows in Red, Blue and IR images so is real. In fact, it is a double blob in their blue image as well as mine (also the green and maybe red frames). I'm guessing it is a heavily obscured background galaxy or two. No catalog I have or find on the net lists anything at its position, 20h 09m 25.7s +41d 14' 39".

This is a pure LRGB image, no H alpha and using only my normal 40 minutes of L data. I have reduced the full image to 1.5" per pixel as the full image came in at about 1 MB in size with my normal compression.

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

Related Designations for IC1311

IC1369

IC 1369 is an open cluster in Cygnus between the North American Nebula and M39. In summer up here we have tiny biting bugs you can barely see we call No-See-Ums. That seems to apply to this cluster. It barely stands out from the background in my image. A smaller aperture would fail to show fainter stars allowing it to stand out better. It shows better in the cropped image. In the full frames it is above center as I used the coordinates at WEBDA and they aren't quite right. WEBDA puts its distance at about 6,800 light-years. They give an age of about 440 million years with a reddening of 0.57magnitudes. It seems all its massive blue stars have died or turned into red giants. The majority of the stars are just weakly blue. I was expecting either a bit older cluster or one more reddened by dust so these figures surprised me slightly. The cluster was discovered by Frederick Pechüle on April 27, 1891. He was a Danish astronomer more interested in comets and asteroids than deep space objects. Still, he found 7 new NGC and 4 new IC objects. He used an 11" refractor and was a student of the more famous (to me anyway) German astronomer, Heinrich d'Arrest. He worked mostly at the Copenhagen Observatory.

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Related Designations for IC1369

IC1413

There are a few interesting galaxies around IC 1413 that caught my attention. I used IC 1413 as a reference as the other galaxies in the image are quite obscure. Also IC 1413 is considered a flat galaxy by the 2 micron catalog, just not flat enough to make the FGC. Unfortunately I didn't find any information on it other than a distance of about 210 million light-years which makes it about 64,000 light-years across. I can't tell if it is an S0 or edge on galaxy. Only one source classified it and then only as S for spiral. Without a dust lane S0 may be more likely. It was discovered by Stephane Javelle as #453 in his catalog on September 19, 1892. While this field is at -3 degrees declination there is some IFN in the northern part of the frame which caught me by surprise.

I was more interested in two other galaxies in this field. To the northwest is LCSB F0054N. That is in the Low Central Surface Brightness catalog. I found nothing on it. It appears to be a somewhat disrupted face on barred spiral. NED gives it a look back time of 120 million years. That would make it about 40,000 light-years across. There is a blue something on the eastern side of the core on the bar. I can't tell if it is a field star or a star cloud. These are rare on a bar so I lean to it being a star. NED lists the northern part of this galaxy as a separate galaxy for some reason. This is a common issue at NED with some galaxies.

The other galaxy that caused me to put this field on the to-do list is the very wide spiral south of IC 1413. It is listed only as a Galex Uv source and as an anonymous galaxy in the Automatic Plate Measuring United Kingdom survey. I can't tell if the "arms" are really arms off the end of a bar or if they are plumes. It too has a mystery object on the northeast side of the galaxy right on the arm. Again it may be a star, a star cloud or possibly the core of a second galaxy that is interacting with the main galaxy that has had most of its stars stripped off, maybe the cause of the plumes if they are plumes. Again I found absolutely nothing on it. Oddly it is a bit red in my image but quite blue in the Sloan image. Likely due to UV I'm not picking up. If so this may support it being a core of an interacting galaxy forming hot massive stars thanks to the interaction. Or there's a color issue with my image. The night was very poor. I have no distance for this galaxy so no idea of its true size. The southern plume extends much further than the northern one. Oddly The Sky insists this galaxy is IC 1413.

The only other galaxy with redshift data is LEDA 190922 another S0 or edge on spiral without a dust lane. It is much larger 160,000 light-years thanks to its much greater distance of 720 million light-years.

Below LCSB F0054N is LEDA 1076771 a rather obvious face on barred spiral. I found nothing on it however. On the far left is what I took to be a pair of interacting galaxies listed at NED as another APMUKS galaxy. But looking at its image in the Sloan Survey it is really a messed up disrupted galaxy that likely was a spiral. A second tiny galaxy is to the north. What disrupted it is unknown. I doubt the little galaxy just to the north is large enough to be the cause.

This field contains lots of interesting galaxies, just that there's no data on them.

Conditions were awful the nights I tried to get data on this one. Even with 7 luminance and 3 each of each color which is 50% to 75% more data than normal for me it is data starved compared to what my normal time would get on a good night. Several 19th magnitude asteroids are listed as being in the image, These are normally easy but I see absolutely no sign of them indicating how poor conditions were. I likely would have picked up a lot more of the IFN as well as seeing more detail in these galaxies if it had been taken on a typical night. This is my first August image. I hope the rest of the month isn't this bad.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=7x10' RGB=3x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for IC1413