M027

M27, the Dumbbell Nebula is located in the faint constellation of Vulpecula the fox. I've never seen it looking like a dumbbell though many apparently do. It was discovered by Charles Messier July 12, 1764. It was apparently the first planetary nebula ever found but it wasn't recognized as that until William Herschel coined the term for some other planetary nebulae he saw. He gave them that name as they looked a lot like Uranus that he had found earlier being a small blue-green disk. M27 if far larger then these being much closer. SEDS puts it at 1250 light-years distant. Other distance estimates are as close as 490 light years. Most put it about 1200 to 1400 light-years.

Its diameter is often listed as 8 minutes of arc. At a distance of 1250 light-years that makes it about 2.9 light-years across. But that is just the bright oval's size and missed the huge halo around it. That is best seen in OIII light which I can't do. I did try Ha light and picked up parts of that halo though being this was my first attempt to merge Ha and LRGB data I did it wrong leaving no color in this outer part, or some of the detail inside for that matter. I need to redo it but being so old I will have to dig out the hard drive with that data from under the stairs which I haven't had time to do as yet. I measure the outer halo at 14.6' for a size of 5.3 light-years. I've not heard of anyone seeing this halo visually so the part you see in a telescope is a bit under 3 light-years across assuming a distance of 1250 light-years. This is rather large for a planetary nebula.

I've attached two versions. One pure LRGB and the other cropped with H alpha data added rather incompetently but at least it helps some. The data was taken on October 28, 2006 only a couple months after I started to try to put color images together and had no idea what I was doing. I cleaned them up a bit but didn't correct the major processing errors I made. Also, it is severely LRGB exposure time starved so quite noisy.

You can read a bit more on it at: http://messier.seds.org/m/m027.html

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=5x5' RGB=3x5', or HA=3x30' RGB=3x5', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M027

M029

M29 is a rather poor star cluster in Cygnus. It's bright stars sort of resemble the little dipper shape of M45. It is severely obstructed by a molecular cloud between us and the cluster. This makes determining a distance difficult. WEBDA says 3750 light-years but other sources place it as far as 9000 light-years. WEBDA's distance is the closest I found. There's a bit better agreement on age with 10 to 13 million years commonly seen. How obscured it is hard to say with these other uncertainties. Some say 3 magnitudes are lost due to the cloud. Others say it is reddened by about three quarter's magnitude but say nothing about total light loss. It is listed as Trumpler class III3p. That translates to detached cluster with no concentration; bright and faint stars, less than 50 stars. For such a bright and easy cluster, even in binoculars, this is one with lots of uncertainty.

This was one of the very first images I took and boy it shows. Most consider my images as data starved with only 40 minutes of luminance data and 10 to 20 for each color. But for this one, I used a grand total of 5 30 second luminance images for a grand total of 2.5 minutes. Each color was similarly exposed. It also is quite obvious no dark frame was used nor flat field frame. Just raw data from the camera. Obviously, this one should be retaken but with it being such a poor cluster this may not happen.

The cluster was first discovered by Charles Messier on July 29, 1764. Johann Bode made an independent discovery over 10 years later on December 5, 1774. It must have been pretty low in his sky when he saw it. It's only 15 degrees up on that date even still in astronomical twilight.

14" LX200R @ f/10, LRGB=5x30", STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M029

M030

M30 is a globular cluster in Capricornus about 26,000 light-years distant. At -23 degrees it is really too low for me to image but being an M object I had to give it a try. I gave up waiting for a really good night and settled for one with fair seeing but not so good transparency. Color data is somewhat suspect due to this as well as how low it is. Being so low my window to image it is short. I settled for half my normal color data and 25% less luminance as nights for imaging so low are very limited. I have to image between trees and fight the wall of the observatory. In fact for the blue image, the wall blocked a considerable portion of my aperture. I tried several more times for the blue data but seeing never cooperated always being very poor.

M30 is one of the Messier objects that Charles Messier actually discovered, recording it on August 3, 1764. He saw a round nebula with no stars. It was not resolved until William Herschel managed to do so in 1784. Considering he was looking from an even higher (not by much) latitude than I work at that was no minor feat. Today it isn't all that difficult to resolve thanks to our much better optics.

M30 has only 12 variable stars. Most globulars have far more. Why it has so few I couldn't learn. It has a very dense core. I had to use a radial mask over the core when stretching the image to prevent the core from burning in and becoming just a blob. I was surprised by the rather high number of blue stars and lack of color in the others. This might be due to how low it was. That normally creates unusually red stars, not blue ones. I suspect the observatory wall has something to do with my color issues. I still have it on my to-do list if the seeing and transparency allow me to get more data.

The dense core is the result of it being a core collapse globular. For more on what this is and M30, in particular, there's a good video on YouTube by Dr. Meghan Gray.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAREyfd0Gmg

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=3x10' RGB=1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M030

M032

M32 is Number 168 in Arp's peculiar galaxy atlas. That puts it in his Galaxies (not classifiable as S or E): Diffuse counter-tails. How many times have you seen this companion to M31 yet not seen the counter-tail? Yeah, me neither. Arp's comment to this one: "Faint diffuse plume curved away from M31's disk." Odd Arp would consider it neither Elliptical or Spiral. Every source I checked classed it as a compact elliptical galaxy, most saying cE2. The "c" for compact. Most sources say much of its outer halo has been stripped away by the tidal forces of M32 yet the counter tail remains, albeit very faintly. If you blow up the image some of the stars of M32 are resolved around the left and bottom edges. At least I think they are members of M32 rather than M31. Blue M31 stars are seen along the right and top edges of M32 however.

To try and find this nearly invisible plume I exposed for several hours but skies were awful. Only 4 frames had decent seeing and halfway usable transparency. I didn't realize this at the time as I looked only at the first and last of the series and they looked good. But CCDSoft's auto histogram stretch can hide a lot. I didn't realize the first frame had 8 times the light throughput as the last. I ended up using only 4 of the series as that gave the best image. Including more just made the plume even harder to see. Note this was taken the day before my high resolution C179 image and seeing was very good. Good enough to have binned 1x1 but I wanted the added speed of the 2x2 binning. That was a good choice as only 40 minutes of 1x1 binned data wouldn't have been as good due to added read noise. The color data was useless due to clouds so used the same low resolution data I used for the previous C179 shot. It wasn't as bad of a match for this image so worked somewhat better.

In the raw data, M32 goes to the far lower left corner of the image. When stretched to bring this out the plume vanished into the background of M31. Probably why few are aware of its existence. Since this outer part of M31 is very blue but the plume from M31 rather red I dimmed down the blue parts of M31 in this area letting the redder features remain. This makes the plume visible though I'm not sure it is curving like Arp says. I don't see the curve on his image either.

Some of the same features on my close-up of M32 are seen in this lower resolution image. Many other features beyond the edges of that image are seen as well so I've prepared an annotated image showing these as well. A few on the edges are shown on both but most Objects already shown on my C179's annotated image are not included for the most part. Also, see that for details on the labeling scheme used. See the entry for C179 for this image.

G117 is a bit of a puzzle. It is on both Chart 5 and 6 of the atlas but the lines connect to different star-like objects! NED shows the lower and brighter one to be a globular so that is the one I chose to use. NED refers to it as SKHV 117. I put a ? by the other object as it has the PSF of an extended object, rather than a star. Just that it isn't in NED and only "half in" the Hodge atlas.

The image is full of open clusters. I've only identified a few of them. In one place I just put OC and ran lines to three in the area. Many fuzzy patches were not in the Hodge atlas nor NED. I gave up trying to track them down. I could spend months on this image alone. Just not worth it.

What I noticed most was the color of the globulars. Many appeared identical to orange stars but for their PSF not being starlike. Seems most globulars I image in our galaxy seem to have a slightly blue overall color thanks to the highly luminously blue stragglers. Are M31 globulars lacking in such stars, are we seeing them through lots of reddening dust? In any case, the tendency of neutral to orange color seems surprising to me.

There are many differences between NED and the Hodge atlas. For instance, the cluster C205 in the upper right corner is at the location of a very blue starlike object. NED shows no cluster at that point but does show the round emission object just below and left of it as a cluster. This whole region seems to be rather poorly mapped to RA/DEC coordinates. It made it impossible to really pin down which of the many HII regions in this area are which on my image. While NED says the position error is 5" on both axes I was finding nothing within that range. Even when I put those coordinates into the DSS it came up with nothing in that range either but maybe 10" away there was something that might be the object but go 10" another direction and there was another possible object. Move a couple minutes from the area and everything was fine again, I was agreeing within a tenth of a second of arc, not tens of seconds as I and the DSS were in this area. The round bubble below the bright star Hodge sees as a cluster is likely one of the Wolf Rayet bubbles listed by NED in the area. I just can't tell which one. In NED its position is nearly that of a cluster with the WR bubbles further away. I've given up, just enjoy the region. Blow up the image 2x for a better view.

To take out the bad taste left by the above fiasco scan down about halfway to the bottom and you'll find a small round red blob. That is listed by NED (coordinates match!) as a Super Nova Remnant they call MLA 0266. Looks like it would be grand as seen from a few thousand light years rather than a few million.

Arp's image, apparently with the Schmidt camera, not 200" (at least his resolution is well below mine) and rotated so east is up rather than north is at:
http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp168.jpeg

SEDS info on M32: http://messier.seds.org/m/m032.html

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10', RGB=4x10'x3 (same as used for C179 image), STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M032

M033

M33, often called the Triangulum Galaxy since it is in that constellation, is the other rather large galaxy in our local group along with M31. Like M31 it is also approaching us but won't arrive here until well after we've merged with M31. Though eventually, all three will become one along with a lot of dwarf members of the local group that weren't ejected by these big boys gravity. Distance estimates range from 2.8 to 3 million light-years. Since it doesn't fit my field of view I have to use published size measurements of 70.8' at NED to estimate its size. That would make it about 58,000 to 62,000 light-years in size or about half that of M31. NED classifies it as SA(s)cd HII while Seligman adds a question mark SA(s)cd?. It contains one of the largest HII regions known. Originally it had enough mass to create a globular cluster though only created a rich open cluster. the detailed HST image is at: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1212/ngc604_hstlegacy_1512.jpg

Seen more face on than M31 its HII regions are much easier to see. Also, it seems to have far more big ones than M31. Many have IC and NGC numbers. I've included an annotated image showing all the IC and NGC nebulae and star clusters. Obviously, there are far more. They have names that only are positional which are long and would make a mess of the image so I didn't bother with them.

M33 was likely first recorded by Giovanni Hodierna before 1764. Though it is barely visible naked eye from a good site. I need averted vision to see it. Being visible naked eye I suppose someone saw it thousands of years ago and wondered what that fuzzy thing was but never recorded it. Even Hodierna's observation went unknown for 300 years. Thus it was Charlies Messier who brought it to the attention of astronomers when he added it to his list on August 18, 1775. William Herschel recorded it on September 11, 1784. Even though already in the M object observing program the AL put it in their original Herschel 400 program as well. My log from that on July 14-1985 with my 10" f/5 at 60x on a night with bright auroral activity visible from here in northern Minnesota reads: "Large, face on spiral. Two arms easily seen as is NGC 604. It is surprisingly good considering the auroral activity I'm having to observe through."

NGC 604 has been mistaken for a comet by more than one amateur on this list that shall remain nameless. It was discovered by William Herschel on September 11, 1784. It is in the second Herschel 400 program. Unfortunately, my notes from that didn't survive the move up here.

NGC 595 is another emission nebula. It was discovered on October 1, 1864 by Heinrich d'Arrest.

NGC 592 is a star cluster in an emission nebula. It was discovered by d'Arrest several 3 years before he saw NGC 595 on October 2, 1861.

NGC 588 is an emission nebula with a small star cluster in it. It was also found by d'Arrest on October 2, 1861.

IC 131 is often mistaken for the bright star with emission around it that is just west of the real IC 131 which is an emission nebula and star cloud per the IC description. Also the position better matches the object I've identified as IC 131. It was first seen by Guillaume Bigourdan on October 28, 1889.

IC 135 is on the eastern side of the galaxy showing many of the IC objects in this galaxy fail to follow RA order for some reason. It is an emission nebula and was discovered by Guillaume Bigourdan the same night as IC 131 and others. There's some uncertainty about the identification of this one. This is what most say is IC 135 but no one can fully make it work with Bigourdan's notes.

IC 136 is listed as an open cluster but it also is an emission nebula. At least the object I've identified as IC 136 is. It too is one Bigourdan found that fateful October night and it too doesn't quite fit his notes but again is the best anyone has come up with for this object.

IC 137 is an open cluster toward the south end of the galaxy. It too was found by Bigourdan that same night and it too has identification issues. Bigourdan's position is over a minute south of the object I've identified as IC 137 but it does match his description and there's nothing like it at his position so another somewhat questionable ID.

IC 139 is listed as an open cluster but I see emission nebula in it. Another Bigourdan discovery that October night. But this one has a rather certain identification for a change.

IC 140 northeast of IC 139 is an open cluster. Yep, another Bigourdan discovery that same night. Like 139 identification of this one seems certain.

IC 142 is listed as a star cluster though emission nebula surrounds it in my image. It is well north of the galaxy's core. Another Bigourdan discovery that October night. One that also has a rather certain identification

IC 143 lies northeast of IC 142 and is an emission nebula. Another Bigourdan find that October night. Its ID is pretty solid.

Many other nebulae, star clouds and star clusters can be seen in my image. I only identified those in the IC and NGC catalogs.

For a lot more on M33 see: http://messier.seds.org/m/m033.html

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10'+3x30Ha, R=2x10'+80% HA, G=2x10' B=2x10+20%Ha, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M033

M034

M34 is a rather poor open cluster in Perseus about 1400 to 1600 light-years distant depending on the source. It is classed as II3m or I3m again sources vary but I vote for I3M as it seems to really stand out. Its age is about 177 to 200 million years also depending on the source. It still has some really blue stars for its age. Being a small low mass cluster it likely will soon be ripped apart by the galaxies tidal forces with the stars unrecognizable as a cluster.

The cluster was first seen by Hodierna but that was lost to history for 300 years. It was then found by Charles Messier on August 25, 1764.

Like many Messier objects, this is a very early attempt at digital imaging and processing. Also, it was taken when I used filters that put blue halos around bright stars, even those not blue. I eventually learned how to process those out then tiring of that spent the money for much better filters. My poor skills of the time show and again is one I need to reshoot or at least reprocess but it's unlikely any time soon.

There are a lot of galaxies in the background. I really should prepare an annotated image but that will have to wait until and if I reprocess it. Near the bottom, a bit right of center is a bright blue star with a galaxy to its upper right. Directly above the blue star is a white star with an asteroid trail going nearly north and south unlike most trails that are mostly east/west. It has a break in it. I don't know why as I left no notes and the raw files are on a stored hard drive not easily accessed. In any case, the asteroid is 133036 2003 AX2 according to a note I left myself.

It is displayed at 1.5" per pixel rather than my usual 1" per pixel.

For more on it see: http://messier.seds.org/m/m034.html

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x5' RGB=2x5', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M034

M035

M35 is one of the more famous open clusters in the northern sky. Oddly I never imaged it until March of 2017. Its size is greater than my field so I figured it not worth the effort but checking I found the majority of its stars would fit into my field so decided to go for it on a very poor night of seeing.

I'd made some modifications to my ancient STL-11000XM camera that were supposed to cure some ills I'd had. One, ice cream cone stars is still there though not nearly as bad. I will have to adjust the pot again to fix those. In the process, I managed to get a smudge on the luminance filter that put spikes on some of the brighter stars. Both created processing challenges I'd not expected to deal with. Nothing a small adjustment to a pot and a filter cleaning won't cure. Otherwise, I'm happy with the changes.

M35 is a big and bright cluster because it is so close and many of its massive stars are still shining brightly on the main sequence though it appears two have turned into red giants. I don't recall seeing those as red visually. Guess I'll have to take another look once the skies clear. WEBDA puts its distance at 2660 light-years, SEDS says 2800, either is very close as cluster's go though the winter sky much closer ones like M45 and the Hyades Cluster, both far too close and thus too large to fit into my field of view until I get a wider field instrument. WEBDA puts the age of M35 at about 95 million years with only a very slight reddening (0.26 magnitudes) as it is so close there's not much dust between us and the cluster.

The cluster's discoverer is a bit murky. We do know Philippe Loys de Chéseaux saw it sometime in 1745 or 1746. John Bevis recorded it in his Uranographica Britannica which he published in 1750. Did he see it before Chéseaux? He definitely made an independent discovery. Messier recorded it on August 30, 1764 giving Bevis credit for bringing it to his attention. Chéseaux was a Swiss astronomer who Messier seems rather unaware of. The debate of who found this one continues. Bevis was an English astronomer. Much of his work was lost when only fragments of his Uranographica Britannica were published due to the bankruptcy of his publisher. He may be the only astronomer who ever saw one planet occult another when Venus occulted Mercury in 1737.

It is displayed at 1.5" per pixel rather than my usual 1" per pixel.

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

Related Designations for M035

M036

How many of you have imaged the Holoea and never knew it? I know I did several times in my film days, though it barely shows in my film images with my 10" f/5.

Holoea is a rare YSO in M36. Holoea is a Hawaiian term that means "flowing gas" (likely a volcanic term). This is descriptive of the gas flowing out from a YSO (Young Stellar Object). It is thought to be a protostar in the process of becoming a pre-main sequence star. This is a very short event astronomically speaking so rarely seen.

From the introduction to one paper on this topic:
"The transition between a Class I and a Class II source (Lada & Wilking 1984) is one of the less well-known phases in the life of a Young Stellar Object (YSO). This period is also one of the most interesting in the evolution of a young star as outflow phenomena, which may determine the final mass of the star and process the material in the surrounding molecular cloud, are particularly active at this stage. However, only few objects are known at or near this boundary between protostar and pre-main sequence star, limiting our possibilities to gain more insight in the physical mechanisms behind this rapid transition. Recently a nebulous object, Holoea (IRAS 05327+3404; Hawaiian for flowing gas), was discovered which shows some characteristics of a Class I source (flat spectrum, outflow), but also has some Class II characteristics (optically visible central star). This object has increased its optical brightness over the last 50 years, suggesting that it is in the process of becoming exposed and making the transition between a protostar and a pre-main sequence star (Magnier et al. 1996, 1999). Guided by the observed properties of Holoea, we have therefore performed a systematic search for additional candidates for the group of transitional YSOs, the results of which are presented in these proceedings."
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/9912/9912235v1.pdf

The best link for this isn't working as I type this. http://kiawe.ifa.hawaii.edu/eugene/science/YSOs/holoea/ Maybe it will be working by the time you read this. The server seems to lock up quite often and times out before loading the page.

The age of M36 is usually given at about 25 to 30 million light-years. So is Holoea part of the cluster? WEBDA puts the age of M36 at about 30 million years it would seem all stars formed long ago and thus Holoea is not likely a cluster member.

The most common distance given for M36 is 4100 light-years which is apparently copied from the SEDS Messier page, though the WEBDA says 4300 light-years. The cluster was first discovered by Hodierna before 1654 then by Le Gentil in 1749 and recorded (likely from Le Gentil's records) by Messier on September 2, 1764.
SEDS info: http://messier.seds.org/m/m036.html

It is displayed at 1.5" per pixel rather than my usual 1" per pixel.

The cropped image is at 0.67" per pixel is centered on Holoea. It looks like a small comet. I've also included a mono image of it in my red, green and blue filters showing how little blue light it emits.

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

Related Designations for M036

M037

M37 is an often viewed open cluster in Auriga with an orange star near the center. I reproduced this with most of the background stars dimmed so it is much more like what you see in a scope (faint stars don't show color). If you look closely, in the upper right corner area, you'll see the red, green (and faint) blue trace of an asteroid. It is 15th magnitude, about the limit for a 14" scope used visually so I used it to set my limiting magnitude for the photo though moving it is harder to detect than a 15th mag star would be so this shows somewhat more stars than you'd see visually. The asteroid has the name "Satpaev". The naming citation for it reads:
(2402) Satpaev = 1979 OR13
Named in memory of Kanysh Imantaevich Satpaev (1899-1964), outstanding geologist. As president of the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR he contributed much to the development of astronomy in Kazakhstan.

While M36 and M38 were discovered by Le Gentil he somehow missed M37. But the Sicilian astronomer Hodierna did find it sometime before 1684. See my entry for M38 for more on this contemporary of Galileo who worked valiantly with a much inferior telescope to the improved version Galileo came up with. Since his work was lost for 3 centuries the discovery actually goes to Charles Messier this time who found it on September 2, 1764.

M37 is some 4400 light years away. See the link below for more info.
http://messier.seds.org/m/m037.html

This was one of my earliest cluster images when I really didn't know what I was doing. At the time I made the excuse I was processing it to look somewhat like the visual appearance it was mostly due to my ignorance and a problem I had at the time preserving star color unless the exposures were very short. Another of many early images (often Messier catalog entries) I need to retake but likely never will. It is displayed at 1.5" per pixel rather than my usual 1" per pixel.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=18x2' RGB=6x2', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M037

M038

M 38 is an open star cluster in Auriga in 2007. I'd thought I processed and posted it long ago. I was astounded to find I hadn't. The directory only had the raw data. Since there's very little to see here but stars I've reduced it to 1.5" of arc per pixel from my normal 1" per pixel size. Some call it the Pi Cluster as it is supposed to resemble the symbol for the Greek letter À. I've never seen the resemblance myself. (À is upside down in my image with north up.) M38 is in Auriga about 4200 light years from us, it is about 25 light-years across and about 220 million years old (very young). It consists mostly of short-lived blue stars. It was discovered in 1654 by Hodierna but he didn't tell anyone so it was rediscovered 95 years later by Le Gentil in 1749. He did tell the world of his discovery so is usually listed as its discoverer. Messier knew about Le Gentil's discoveries and included most in his list in 1764. Messier didn't even start his catalog until a year after Le Gentil discovered M38.

Hodierna was one of the first to try and catalog nebulous objects but he was severely hampered by his poor quality Galilean 20x scope. He compiled a list of some 40 objects, not all real unfortunately due to being mislead by his telescope's low quality. His work was quickly lost not to be found until the early 1980's, 300 years later. Otherwise, we might be calling it Ha. II.7 rather than M38. He also found nearby M36 and M37. He thought all were nebula rather than star clusters, however. He also discovered Ha. II.3 which was missed by Messier and is known as the "Double Cluster". A very famous object to beginning amateur astronomers. Another lost item is Brocchi's Cluster. It really should be Hodierna's Cluster. This is a perfect coat hanger hanging upside down in the Milky Way as seen in binoculars. Again he saw it as a nebula, however. It is easily seen as a coat hanger in any pair of binoculars. The only nebula he cataloged as a nebula was M 8. He did catalog M42 but considered it "Luminosae" whatever that was. M45, the Hyades, and several other huge star groups were in this category. But the much smaller, bright cluster NGC 6231 (way too far south for me to image) is in this category as well.

It is displayed at 1.5" per pixel rather than my usual 1" per pixel.

M38 isn't all that interesting but I want to image as many M objects as I can from this latitude (many are just too far south, unfortunately) even if not all that interesting. In this case, the history of its discoverer is more interesting to me than the object so I digressed a bit. Hope you don't mind.

Related Designations for M038