M039

Once in a while, I find I've missed something everyone has imaged but I haven't or it was taken back in my film days for which nearly all were destroyed. I don't remember ever taking M39 even on film other than with a 50mm lens when taking the entire constellation of Cygnus. Time to rectify that oversight even if my only imaging system is ill-suited for it.

M39 is best seen in binoculars or a small telescope. But a 14" scope is all I have for digital work right now so it will have to do. The cluster may have been first recorded by Aristotle about 325 BC as a comet-like object. Modern discovery is usually credited to Charles Messier in 1764. Though Burnham claims it was Le Gentil in 1850 that first recorded it. That idea is not all that well accepted. It appears certain Messier's discovery was independent of the others so I'll go with that. It is visible naked eye so Aristotle and many others certainly could have seen it.

The cluster is about half a degree across and triangular in shape. My field is just wide enough to catch the base of the triangle but the top is out of my field. It is very scattered. So much so William Herschel refused to include it saying: “Consists of such large and straggling stars that I could not tell where it began nor where it ended. It cannot be called a cluster.” but his son John did saying: “A star of 7th mag [position taken], one of a large loose cluster of stars of 7th to 10th magnitude; very coarsely scattered, and filling many fields." The scopes they used had very small fields of view making seeing it as a true cluster very difficult.

The cluster consists of all main branch stars, no giants are seen. Only stars of A0 and cooler are seen which gives it an age of about 230 to 300 million years. Sources vary but most are at or near the top figure of 300 million years of age. Its distance is also somewhat undecided. WEBDA says it is about 1050 light-years distant. Most other sources I found said around 825 light-years.

There are only two galaxies in my field with known redshift. NED only lists two others without magnitude or redshift data. The two with known redshifts appears related. They are close together at the bottom of my image right of center. Both very red due to being seen through a lot of dust in the plane of our galaxy. The face on spiral is LEDA 086597 and is classed as a face on spiral with a redshift distance of about 160 million light-years. To its right is LEDA 167495 with a redshift putting it about 150 million light-years distant. I found no classification for it.

As I knew clouds were a problem I took 3 10 minute shots in each color hoping for at least 2 being usable. Nope, only one each was and the red one I used was marginal. Still, with stars, I can get away with only 10 minutes of data per color.

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

SEDS info: http://messier.seds.org/m/m039.html

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

Related Designations for M039

M040

M40 is simply the double star Winnecke 4. The separation has been steadily increasing since Winnecke first measured it at 49.2" in 1863 at a position angle of 88 degrees. Hipparcos in 1991 said 52.8" at 77 degrees. Intermediate measurements show the pair to be separating on a straight line so they are a line of sight pair. There seems to be some discrepancy about their spectral color. Lick Observatory's catalog shows them as G0 and F8 while Brian Skiff says K0III and G0V. Unfortunately, my color data is severely distorted by clouds, especially during the red frames. I tried on a second night for new red data only to have clouds again create a problem. Thus I'm not sure about my colors. I did push them too but I seem to see a late G and early F. Looking at other photos online I see the few color ones showing white and slightly blue though the Sloan Survey image would appear to agree to Brian Skiff's K and G classification. I'm likely too blue with the hotter star.

The main reason for imaging it was I'm trying to get color digital images of all M objects north of 15S. So was going to make a quick image of it but when I saw the two nice galaxies appear in the framing shot I decided to move to a midpoint between them and use my normal exposure time. As mentioned, clouds hurt the color data. Another I should revisit.

The barred spiral, NGC 4290 reminds me of "The Eye" galaxy, NGC 3646, in that it has a large ring surrounding a rather normal galaxy, a barred spiral in this case. The inner ring is somewhat distorted with the western side nearly linear rather than circular in shape as the eastern half is.

Assuming a distance of 140 million light-years and a diameter of 2.02 minutes it is only 80,000 light years across, much smaller than NGC 3646. NED and the NGC Project class it as SB(rs)ab: with HII.

The spiral to the west is NGC 4284. It is somewhat further away; 200 million light-years by redshift and a bit further, 225,000 by the average of Tully-Fisher measurements though a measurement by IRAS agrees to the redshift value. At first glance it appears smaller in angular size than NGC 4290 but when the drawn-out faint arm pointing toward NGC 4290 is considered it is actually larger at nearly 2.8 minutes. That, using the 200 million light-year distance gives a size of 160,000 light-years or twice that of NGC 4290. It is classed as Sbc by both NED and the NGC project. Except for the faint drawn out arm, it is a pretty normal looking, if very large spiral galaxy.

There's a really flat galaxy just under a bright star toward the bottom of the image below NGC 4290. I was hoping to find something on it but NED fails to pick it up and also fails to pick up a much fainter smudge beside it. These are marked by a question mark. Also, a very blue smudge of a galaxy just above a very blue star-like galaxy is also missing from the catalog though the blue star-like one is listed.

The image has several very blue quasars as well.

M40 was used by Messier as a known point when looking for a reported galaxy in the area that was erroneous. Since he had the coordinates of the stars I put it in his catalog -- or so the story goes. SEDS has a bit more on this: http://messier.seds.org/m/m040.html

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

Related Designations for M040

M041

M41 is a rather famous open star cluster below Sirius. But at -20 degrees it is down in the winter gunk for me. Still, being one of the more famous M objects I had to give it a try on a really "good" night. More on the imaging issues later.

M41 is thought to be about 2300 light-years away. It is a rather sparse but bright star cluster covering about 38 minutes of arc which is larger than my field's width of 33.7 minutes and a lot larger than its height of 22.5 minutes. So I only capture the center of the cluster. It is famous for the K3 orange star at its center though contains other fainter K stars as well. They don't show their color visually in small scopes however so are often overlooked. This is a rather young cluster, thought to be about 190 to 240 million years old. This compares to our sun's age of 4,500 million years. At about magnitude 4.5, it is visible to the naked eye. There's weak evidence Aristotle saw it long before the invention of the telescope. More certain is his discovery of averted vision helping to see faint objects in the night sky. It was first seen telescopically by Hodierna but his observations went unknown for centuries. John Flamsteed found it February 16, 1702 and Le Gentil saw it in 1749 so it was well known by Messier's time. He recorded it in 1765. http://www.seds.org/messier/more/m041_ari.html

Up here moisture in the air condenses out forming ice crystals our air is so cold, -30C is typical on a good clear night and -40C/F not uncommon. These crystals form a haze over the lake I live on. They literally fall like fine snow out of a clear sky. Imaging low like this means imaging through a lot of this ice crystal haze. Like atmospheric particles, these fine ice crystals scatter blue and green light. The center of this image was in a fog of blue and some green light scattered by the brighter stars of the cluster. GradientXterminator had to work overtime but did a great job on this haze. I also forgot I was imaging a cluster and used my normal 10 minute subs. This is way too long for bright star clusters as the stars saturate making it difficult to recover their true color. Fortunately, there are techniques for finding the color from the fringes of the star's bloated, overexposed image and using that to color the star. I don't like to do that but did in this case. Of course, the overexposure also made the haze from the ice crystals worse as well. Being so low stars distort due to atmospheric refraction. I tried a technique used to reduce motion blur and finally managed to sort of make it work. At least the stars look somewhat round but bloated. The haze I had hid most of the faint Milky Way background stars. This helped the cluster stars to stand out but does give a rather empty looking background compared to what I'd have otherwise. Unfortunately, there are many such Messier objects this low in the sky making it next to impossible for me to image them from this far north.

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

Related Designations for M041

M042

M42 and 43 are two of the most famous objects in Messier's list. The complex is easily seen naked eye so who first saw it is unknown to history. Mayan's, Ptolemy and others have some claim to its discovery. The first telescopic discovery is usually credited to Nicolas Peiresc on November 24, 1610. Shortly thereafter a more detailed description comparing it to a comet of 1618 was made by Johann Baptist Cysat who may have described the Trapezium cluster as he referred to the nebula coming out of a bright rectangular object. Galileo saw three of the Trapezium's stars on February 4, 1617 but never mentions the nebula. The first sketching of it is normally said to be by Giovanni Battista Hodierna in 1684 but went unnoticed until 1985. Charles Messier saw the nebula and three of the Trapezium stars when he recorded it on March 4, 1769. It wasn't until 1865 when William Huggins showed spectroscopically it was made of "luminous gas" rather than unresolved stars. In 1889 Henry Draper took the first photo of it using an 11" refractor. Robert Trumpler gave the central star cluster consisting of 4 bright stars and hundreds of fainter ones, best seen in infrared light, the name Trapezium for the geometric shape of the four brightest stars. Now M42 and 43 must be the most photographed Messier object and maybe the most photographed astronomical object other than the moon and maybe planets like Jupiter and Saturn.

Yet I only took a halfhearted attempt at it back in early January 2007, gave it a quick and dirty processing and never went back to it. Common objects like this just don't interest me but I had to take it since that's expected, as are the other Messier objects within reach of my 47N latitude. Also, it is too big for my field needing at least 4 frames to be covered completely. I'll let others do it.

M43 is the cloud just north of M42. It was first seen as a separate nebula in 1731 by Jean-Jaques Mairan. Messier recorded it the same time as M42, March 4, 1769.

14" LX200R @ f/10, Ha=4x5' RGB=4x1', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M042

M046

M46 is another open star cluster but in the winter skies rather than summer. It also is quite low as seen from in the Great (now) White North. It has a planetary nebula on the northern edge, NGC 2438 though the two are totally unrelated. The open cluster is about 5400 light-years away while the planetary is much closer at 2900 light years. The very blue faint star is the white dwarf created when it puffed off its outer layers creating the planetary nebula. Its ultraviolet light provides the energy to make it glow. The cluster is about 300 million years old, the planetary less than 10% that age. In astronomy, these are very "new" objects! You can read more about them at:
http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m046.html

While I quoted a distance of 5400 light-years above as that's what a lot of sites say including SEDS linked to above, the astronomers at APOD put it at 5000 light-years while WEBDA says 4500. APOD puts its age at 300 million years while WEBDA says 245 million and SEDS doesn't hazard a guess.

M46 was discovered by Charles Messier on February 19, 1771. NGC 2438 was discovered by William Herschel on March 19, 1786. It is in the original H400 observing program. I logged it for the program on March 23, 1985 on an average night with my 10" f/5 at up to 180x. My entry reads: "Looks a lot like a faint version of M57. The real central star is not seen but a member of M46 does appear a bit off center in the dark area of the ring along with another member star on the inside of the dark area of the ring. This nebula stands high power well." The true central star is seen in my image just to the lower right of the bright star mentioned in my entry as a faint quite blue star.

M46 was the very first object imaged after I built my observatory. Though this isn't that image it is a very early image, one of my first color images. At the time I had no idea how to preserve color in stars and kept trying shorter and shorter exposures. Using only 2 minutes for this one which results in a ton of read noise hiding faint detail. I do need to retake it using proper techniques I didn't understand 11 years ago. Also, being an early image the alignment of the camera was off creating rather elongated stars. Beginner's luck didn't apply to this image, unfortunately.

14" LX200R @ f/10 L=10x2', RGB=5x2', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M046

M047

M 47/NGC 2422 is a very coarse open cluster about 1600 light-years distant in Puppis. In my skies, it is an easy naked eye object, seen as a fuzzy patch. It is a good object for very small telescopes. Spread over an area of the sky the size of the full moon it is too big for my field of view. Even though it doesn't fit my field of view I had to image it as I'm trying to image all M objects I can reach from my latitude. Some are just too low, unfortunately. I'm displaying it at 1.5" per pixel as it is so spread out that helps a bit. WEBDA puts its age at a bit over 70 million years so many of its hot blue stars are still shining for us to see. This plus its closeness makes it a naked eye cluster though individual stars can't be seen without a bit of optical aid such as a pair of binoculars.

Located in the winter Milky Way M 47 is seen against a rather strong star field. It contains some 50 stars in an area about 14 light-years across. Its age is estimated to be 72 to 78 million years.

SEDS reports the cluster was first seen by Hodierna prior to 1654. Messier rediscovered it over 100 years later. Considering it is a rather easy naked eye object I find this surprising. Messier found it on February 19, 1771, but gave a wrong sign with his position so it was still lost. Caroline Herschel then found it in early 1783. Still, she gets no official credit because her brother, William Herschel found it yet again on February 4, 1785. Dreyer then gave him the credit. How you lose a naked eye cluster so many times I can't explain. Hodierna was a Sicilian astronomer who found 19 major objects long before anyone else with his basic Galilean telescope yet gets no credit because his discoveries were published in an obscure Italian publication no one read. You can read more on him at http://messier.seds.org/xtra/similar/hodierna.html and http://messier.seds.org/xtra/Bios/hodierna.html

Before you say there are no galaxies in the image NED lists two. They are faint and star-like with little data available, not even an estimated magnitude.

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

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=8x5' RGB=4x5', STL=11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M047

M048

M48 is an open cluster is western Hydra. I find distance estimates of 1500 and 2000 light-years. It is some 50+ minutes across if you include the outlying stars. Most of them, however, fit within my much smaller field of view.

There are quite a few galaxies behind the cluster but only a very few (7) are listed in NED, none with distance data. All are in the 2MASX catalog of IR sources.

There's one known asteroid in the image (73488) 2002 PO90 at magnitude 17.9. It is halfway from the center to the lower left corner. It appears as two short 10 minute trails followed by a 20 minute trail with gaps for 15 minutes of color data. Sort of a U in Morse Code.

M48 was discovered by Charles Messier on February 18, 1771 but he got the declination nearly 4 degrees off so it was quickly lost. Johann Bode then found it sometime before 1782 but this went unnoticed by Dreyer. Dreyer then gave credit to Caroline Herschel who found it as NGC 2548 according to Dreyer based on John Herschel's confirmation of Caroline's discovery on August 3, 1783. It wasn't until 1934 that Oswald Thomas pointed out the error Messier made showing NGC 2548 was indeed the lost M48. But even that wasn't generally accepted until it was again suggested in 1959 by T. F. Morris and finally it was generally accepted the two were one and the same. Did the world trust Canadian astronomers (Morris) more than Romanian ones (Thomas)? You can read a bit on this at: http://messier.seds.org/m/m048.html

Seeing wasn't very good this night so stars are somewhat distorted and rather flat looking. Ice crystals filled the air scattering, especially blue light. I didn't know how to compensate the many years ago this was taken and processed. I need to reprocess it but for now, this will have to do.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=8x5' RGB=3x5', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M048

M049 ARP134

Arp 134 is a galaxy very familiar to amateur astronomers being it is one of the biggest and brightest galaxies in the sky and looks perfectly normal to the eye and in most photos. I'm talking about the giant elliptical galaxy M49. So why would a perfectly normal elliptical make the list? Seems it is eating its companion UGC 07636. It is in Arp's classification as "Elliptical or elliptical-like galaxies; with nearby fragments", Arp had no comment on this one. UGC 07636 is the "fragment." Apparently, he thought it part of M49 rather than an appetizer as he didn't give it an identification and most Arp lists don't include it as part of Arp 134 even though it is. In my shot, it is the blue splat like feature on the "front" of M49. Looks to me like where a blue phaser is hitting the Enterprise's shields and the energy is being spread across the shields. Notice the blue stars ripped from the galaxy spreading into M 49 or at least appearing to do so. In a black and white photo like you normally see this contrast is lost. M49 was first recorded by Charles Messier on February 19, 1771.

There are a lot of other NGC galaxies in the image. Considering we are looking at the heart of the Virgo Cluster this isn't surprising. NGC 4464 (E3) is at the top of the image a bit right of center. It was discovered by William Herschel on December 28, 1785. NGC 4465 (Sc) is much nearer Arp 134 on the very edge of its halo at 2 o'clock, just under a small blue star. It is rather small with little detail as it is 5 or 6 times farther away at 351 million light years and thus not a member of the Virgo cluster. It was discovered by Guillaume Bigourdan on March 31, 1886. NGC 4467 (E2) is even closer to Arp 134 and thus within the fainter outer halo at the 3 o'clock position just left of a rather bright blue star. It was discovered by Otto Struve on April 28, 1851. NGC 4471 is often equated with. At the very bottom of my image barely left of NGC 4471 is often considered the same as PGC 41185. This is highly unlikely. Its discoverer was Julius Schmidt on July 29, 1861. His scope was most likely incapable of seeing this galaxy. His position is halfway between the two stars below and a bit left of the galaxy. They are bright enough for him to have seen them both. Which he considered the galaxy is unknown but it is most likely safe to say NGC 4471 is just a star. See the annotated image. NGC 4470 (Sa?) is another confusing entry. It was discovered by William Herschel on January 23, 1784. He measured its position in relation to a Messier galaxy but used the wrong one so got the position quite wrong. This led to it being entered into the NGC as NGC 4610. Later on December 28, 1785 he found it again getting the position correct. That resulted in the NGC 4470 entry.

Notice how all these members of the cluster are far smaller than M49. That's because M49 is a giant among galaxies and one of the anchor galaxies whose gravity holds the cluster together (along with the dark matter of course). One other NGC galaxy is trying to get into the image. You see the western side of its halo at the far left. Normally it is a star on the edge of my CCD that is making a glaring entrance to the image. Here we just see the outer halo of NGC 4492, most of which is out of the frame. So this time the "glare" is real not just a reflection. It too was discovered by William Herschel on December 28, 1785. None of the three William Herschel found are in either observing program.

The spiral galaxy in the lower right corner is PGC 41107/CGCG 042-125 Sb(r) It isn't a cluster member being at 350 million light years and thus likely in a group with NGC 4465 mentioned earlier. Nearer to Arp 134 almost on a line to its core from CGCG 042-125 is the weirdly named VIII Zw 189 (E0) and it is a member of the cluster.

Arp's 200" photo of this galaxy is at:
http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/frames.html
It has south up rather than north up as for my photo. UGC 7636 is at the upper right in his blue light image of the system. Since the halo is rather lacking in blue light it barely shows in his image but UGC 7636 being very blue shows strongly. A color CCD image gives a more natural look at the situation than does a film image taken in one color.

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

Related Designations for M049 ARP134

M050

M50 is an open cluster in southern Monoceros about 3200 light-years distant. Whoever decided Monoceros was a unicorn was on some really "good stuff". The cluster resides in the winter Milky Way so has a fair number of background stars. In winter we are looking out, away from the galaxy's core. So while the stars are numerous they are spread much thinner than those in the summer Milky Way. Assuming the 3200 light-year distance it contains about 200 stars in a sphere 20 light-years across. That would put the 200 stars in a volume of 4200 cubic light-years or one star every 20 cubic light-years. In the same volume around our sun, there are 16 stars including the sun. But one is a triple star system and three are double star systems. At 3200 light-years these multiple stars would be seen as one so we'd see 12 stars but two of these are brown dwarfs, invisible in ordinary light, reducing the count to 10 that would be seen in a scope like mine from this cluster of 200. So yes it is a cluster. Also, the number of stars brighter than our sun in the cluster is several dozen while there's only two brighter than the sun in our similar area, Sirius and Alpha Centauri. At that distance, our sun would be barely visible visually in my 14" telescope and too faint to see in my 10" scope. Most of the stars seen in this cluster in my image are brighter than the sun by a factor of 100 times. That's because they are hot stars that live less than a billion years. The cluster is thought to be about 125,000 years old according to WEBDA. So its very brightest stars have lived and died but it still has plenty of stars 100 times the brightness of the sun.

Most credit the discovery of this cluster to Giovanni Cassini sometime in 1711. Charles Messier recorded it on April 5, 1772 but it is uncertain if he made an independent discovery or was reporting it from Cassini's observation he may have run across. Various writers seem to have differing opinions on both of these "discoverers". SEDS says Messier did discover it.

For more see: http://messier.seds.org/m/m050.html

For reasons lost since it was taken in March 2008 I took the image at 1.5" per pixel then cropped it a bit. So the image is smaller than normal. I'm guessing seeing was poor and the cluster didn't really need higher resolution. But I left no notes about this.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x5' RGB=1x5', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M050

M051 ARP85

Arp 85 is better known as M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. It is probably the easiest to see as a spiral in an amateur size telescope. Arp put it in his category for Spirals with large, high surface brightness companions. This time the companion is really a companion and they are interacting. Being well studied we know that the larger galaxy, NGC 5194 has passed slightly in front of the smaller, NGC 5195. The interaction has drawn out an arm from NGC 5194 whose dust lanes are seen against NGC 5495 making this smaller galaxy look even stranger than it really is and giving it a red color due to being seen through the dust. NED classifies NGC 5194 as SA(s)bc pec; HIISy2.5. Seligman agrees though ads a question mark. The NGC project says more simply Sc. NED classifies NGC 5195 as SB01 pec as does Seligman. The NGC Project, however, says SB0-a. Redshift puts the pair about 30 million light-years distant. NGC 5194 was first seen by Charles Messier on October 13, 1773. The companion wasn't seen as a separate galaxy until March 21, 1781 when Messier's friend Pierre Méchain recorded it.

I took this image 5 days after supernova 2011dh was discovered. The delay was due to lousy weather. Even then clouds prevented but one 10 minute round of color data rather than my normal 2. I did add in H alpha data from a previous image to help bring out the HII regions in the system. The SN was still brightening as a type IIP SN when I imaged it. I got a magnitude of 14.4 and the following night through clouds I measured it at 14.0. Clouds returned until it had faded below this level. The P indicates it is a plateau type SN that after a short fall, levels off for a bit before continuing to fade. Thanks to clouds I missed that phase.

There are two IC galaxies in the image, IC 4277 and 4278. I have no distance data for IC 4277 unfortunately. Seligman says S?? It looked flat enough to be in one of the flat galaxy catalogs but I didn't find it in any of them. IC 4278 is a strange galaxy some have said is either a double nucleus or interacting pair. The Sloan survey image, however, shows the two blue blobs to be connected by a slightly red bar pretty much ruling out either of these ideas. Seligman classifies it as Ir??. I'd add a B for the bar. Both were discovered by James Edward Keeler on May 10, 1899. He was using the Crossley reflector at Lick Observatory to image M51 and picked up 7 IC galaxies, including these two in the image. Another he found that night is IC 4282. Seligman classifies it as dE??. Keeler was director of the observatory at the time. He died the following year at the age of 42. His ashes are interred in a crypt at the base of the 31 inch Keeler Memorial telescope at Allegheny Observatory.

The annotated image has information on other galaxies in the field.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' HA=3x30' RGB=1x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M051 ARP85