M065

M66 is also known as Arp 16. It made his atlas under the heading of spiral galaxies with detached segments. It also is part of Arp Arp 317. Making it the only galaxy to have two entries in Arp's atlas. M66 is a rather active galaxy due to interaction with the other members of its group. It is this interaction that likely accounts for Arp's "detached segments" seen in this galaxy. To me, they are just clouds of new, blue stars created by interaction with its neighbors.

NED classifies it as SAB(s)b;LINER Sy2, The NGC Project simplifies this to Sb while Seligman says SAB(s)b?. The galaxy's discovery is credited to Charles Messier on March 1, 1780. While some sources credit it's discovery to Pierre Méchain who did discover many objects in Messier's catalog that is unlikely in the case of M66. Messier was careful to note those found by Méchain but made no such note for this entry.

Arp's image: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp16.jpeg
SEDS information: http://messier.seds.org/m/m066.html

14" LX 200R @ f/10 L=6x10, RG=2x10' B=4x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M065

M065SN

M65 is part of Arp 317 which also includes NGC 3628 and M 66. I imaged them individually several years ago. On March 21 a type II supernova blew in M 65. As most of you know I've been imaging all the Arp galaxies I can reach from my 47N latitude. Over the years several have had supernova go off in them. I've gone back to catch them with the supernova. So wanted to add this one to the list but the weather hasn't cooperated. Finally, on April 2 (UTC), it did. I also managed to fit M 66 into the field as well. Conditions were forecast to be poor for seeing but at least I could get color data. Turned out the seeing was better than forecast so I was able to get it in one night. We did have ground fog which didn't help the color. Blue really was hurt so I took 4 rounds of blue rather than my usual 2 but it still wasn't all that good.

The three galaxies of Arp 317 are said to be interacting. It is obvious that M 66 has been distorted by some interaction and has a large plume to the north and northwest. It is a very active galaxy with lots of star formation apparently triggered by the interaction. NGC 3638 has a tidal plume (that I failed to pick up due to insufficient exposure) I see little indication that M 65 is seriously distorted by any interaction. It looks pretty typical to the eye.

While redshift puts the trio about 50 million light-years away the accepted distance for them is about 35 million light-years. Not a surprising difference as the group is traveling through space together. This motion can add or subtract from the cosmological redshift distance enough to account for the difference. Redshift is sufficient to say the distance is 100 million or 200 million light-years but isn't accurate enough to work very well with our near neighbors like this group.

I notice a group of faint galaxies in the image at 1.63 billion light-years give or take a bit. The search radius of my field failed to turn up any group at that distance labeled in NED.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x10' RG=2x10' B=4x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M065SN

M067

M67 is an open star cluster in Cancer. While it is considered a very old cluster its age is still heavily debated. WEBDA gives an age of 9.3 billion years, nearly the age of the galaxy and more in line with a globular cluster than an open cluster. Others say 3 to 4 billion years for it. Due to its age, it lacks the bright blue stars seen in most open clusters. It seems to contain some A stars which would argue against the WEBDA age as those stars would have long since died though could they just be field stars rather than cluster members. I didn't find motion studies of the stars which should answer such questions. Most sources do agree it is about 3,000 light-years or a bit less distant. WEBDA says 2960 while SEDS says 2700 for example.

My image lacks a lot of stars due to being taken through heavy clouds. I was only able to salvage two luminance frames and those were heavily hit. But the main cluster shows up. I do miss the 200 or so white dwarf stars it contains which are the remains of the hot blue stars normally seen in such clusters. It must have been a grand site when they were still main sequence stars.

The cluster was first discovered by Johann Koehler sometime in 1779 or maybe earlier. Messier recorded it on April 6, 1780.

For more on it at SEDS see: http://messier.seds.org/m/m067.html

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=2x10' RGB=2x5'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M067

M071

M71 has had an identity crisis for many years. For a while it was classed as an open cluster. But others thought it was a globular star cluster like M5 and M15 in previous updates. Since M71 lies in a dense part of the Milky Way it is very hard to separate galaxy stars from those that belong to M71. You can read about the debate at the SEDS website
http://messier.seds.org/m/m071.html

Not mentioned there is that some astronomers now feel it may be neither of these. They think it likely the core of a dwarf spherical galaxy that was "eaten" by our galaxy long ago in the past. Only the core had enough gravity to survive the tidal impact of our galaxy which stole most of its stars. They feel Omega Centauri, a much larger but loose globular and maybe M55 and M68 are also really the cores of galaxies gobbled up by our galaxy. Whatever it is it is currently seen against the background of the Milky Way in the constellation of Sagitta the arrow. If anyone is bored they are welcome to count the stars in my shot.

It was first seen by Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745. Johann Koehler saw it sometime between 1772 and 1778. Pierre Méchain saw it June 28, 1780 reporting to Charles Messier who then observed it on October 4, 1784.

I was unable to locate any determination of its age which I found odd. If it is an open cluster it would be quite young. If a globular from our galaxy likely about 10 billion years old but if captured from another galaxy the age could be between these or even older than our galaxy. In any case a young age would argue for it being an open cluster.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x5' RGB=3x5' STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M071

M072

M72, NGC 6981, is a distant globular cluster in Aquarius. At -12.5 degrees it is too far south for me to image clearly unless the night is exceptional. It wasn't, unfortunately. Classed as Shapley IX it is a rather sparse globular that only seems dense due to its distance of 53 to 55 thousand light-years. It was discovered on October 29 by Pierre Méchain and reported to Messier. Messier observed and recorded it, along with M73 on the night of October 4. A Hubble image shows how sparse this cluster really is. It is only the core of the cluster. http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1001a/

For more on it see: http://messier.seds.org/m/m072.html

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x5' RGB=3x5', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M072

M073

M73 is a probable asterism of 4 stars in western Aquarius. It was discovered by Charles Messier on October 4, 1780 who realized it was just 4 stars. So why did he include it in his list? Messier gave us the answer when he wrote of finding M73: "Cluster of three or four small stars, which resembles a nebula at first glance, containing very little nebulosity; this cluster is located on the parallel [of declination] of the preceding [M 72]; its position has been determined from the same star [Nu Aquarii]." So he found it while logging nearby M72 and thought it possible someone with an inferior scope might see it as nebulous. while there he added it to the list.

There has been a lot of debate whether these 4 stars are related or not. Hipparcos data is a bit too unreliable to solve the issue. Latest measurements seem to indicate this is an asterism but the issue is still undecided. You can read about several studies coming to different conclusions at:
http://messier.seds.org/m/m073.html

WEBDA does appear to consider it a star cluster giving it the ripe old age of 2.5 billion years and a distance of 2000 light-years.

I vote for asterism even though one analysis says the odds are 1 in 4 that it is an asterism.

Only about 10 galaxies in the field are listed in NED, all being IR strong galaxies from the 2MASS survey. The brightest is 2MASX J20595407-1227455 in the upper left corner at magnitude 16.06. None of the others even have a magnitude listed.

This was a quick image with half my usual exposure data. It was a quicky while killing time until the next object on my list came into position. I'd imaged the double star Arp 40 discovering a nice pair of galaxies in the field that are rarely imaged. I was hoping something might turn up in this tiny group's field. Nothing much did but I've finally, after nearly 60 years of astrophotography finally got an image of it, short as it is.

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

Related Designations for M073

M074

M74 is a classic face on grand design spiral galaxy in Pisces about 32 million light-years away. Redshift puts it only 17 million light-years away but is highly unreliable when dealing with such short distances. Many other determinations all converge on the 32 million light-year distance. It is rather famous to those working on their Messier list with a small telescope as being possibly the most difficult of the Messier galaxies to see due to its very low surface brightness. Though I believe M101 has a fainter surface brightness, its larger angular size makes it easier to find. The galaxy is much studied by those working on the density wave theory of spiral structure as it is so close many of its brighter young stars can be seen in ground-based scopes while the HST can really dig into its guts. I'll save my fingers and let you read all about it at the HST site: http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/pr2007041a/ . It appears to be about 94,000 light-years in diameter in my image.

While I imaged this one as about my first color image of a galaxy after moving to digital imaging the result was poor. Both due to my virtually nil processing skills and some mistakes in my imaging technique. It was always going to retake it but never seemed to get around to it. Instead, I reprocessed the old data but the results were less than satisfactory. That all changed a few days ago when Super Nova 2013ej was discovered in it on July 25th. Unfortunately, it is a very early morning object that never does rise to my normal imaging position of no more than 2 hours from the meridian before dawn. I make exceptions for events like this but the weather was the other issue. It just wouldn't cooperate. I made several abortive attempts that got so little of use I didn't use any of it but some color data from the previous night. By using both nights the color issues pretty much evened out. At least I hope they did. Reports have the supernova reddening the last few days. It is still very blue in my image. That just may mean it was even bluer earlier or maybe I have too little red. I hate trying to second guess clouds.

Fortunately, while clouds may reduce the photon count and thus signal to noise ratio, M74 is a bright galaxy and can suffer some loss and still look good. Thus the luminance data all taken August 7 due to its seeing being the best of the lot does work. The result is a much better version of M74 than I could eke out of the old data with many of its HII regions showing up and a 12.5 magnitude supernova to boot. If dawn would have held off another two hours it would have been better but we work with what the skies give us. For much of this year that's not much!

NED has little on the region but since I figured it best to point out which star was the supernova I went ahead and made an annotated image. There's even one asteroid at the bottom right. The color trail is from the second night.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=4x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount MEM74 is a classic face on grand design spiral galaxy in Pisces about 32 million light-years away. Redshift puts it only 17 million light-years away but is highly unreliable when dealing with such short distances. Many other determinations all converge on the 32 million light-year distance. It is rather famous to those working on their Messier list with a small telescope as being possibly the most difficult of the Messier galaxies to see due to its very low surface brightness. Though I believe M101 has a fainter surface brightness, its larger angular size makes it easier to find. The galaxy is much studied by those working on the density wave theory of spiral structure as it is so close many of its brighter young stars can be seen in ground-based scopes while the HST can really dig into its guts. I'll save my fingers and let you read all about it at the HST site: http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/pr2007041a/ . It appears to be about 94,000 light-years in diameter in my image.

While I imaged this one as about my first color image of a galaxy after moving to digital imaging the result was poor. Both due to my virtually nil processing skills and some mistakes in my imaging technique. It was always going to retake it but never seemed to get around to it. Instead, I reprocessed the old data but the results were less than satisfactory. That all changed a few days ago when Super Nova 2013ej was discovered in it on July 25th. Unfortunately, it is a very early morning object that never does rise to my normal imaging position of no more than 2 hours from the meridian before dawn. I make exceptions for events like this but the weather was the other issue. It just wouldn't cooperate. I made several abortive attempts that got so little of use I didn't use any of it but some color data from the previous night. By using both nights the color issues pretty much evened out. At least I hope they did. Reports have the supernova reddening the last few days. It is still very blue in my image. That just may mean it was even bluer earlier or maybe I have too little red. I hate trying to second guess clouds.

Fortunately, while clouds may reduce the photon count and thus signal to noise ratio, M74 is a bright galaxy and can suffer some loss and still look good. Thus the luminance data all taken August 7 due to its seeing being the best of the lot does work. The result is a much better version of M74 than I could eke out of the old data with many of its HII regions showing up and a 12.5 magnitude supernova to boot. If dawn would have held off another two hours it would have been better but we work with what the skies give us. For much of this year that's not much!

NED has little on the region but since I figured it best to point out which star was the supernova I went ahead and made an annotated image. There's even one asteroid at the bottom right. The color trail is from the second night.

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

Related Designations for M074

M076

M 76 is often called the "Little Dumbell Nebula". It is a bipolar planetary nebula in Perseus. It lies some 2500 light-years from us based on the latest paper I could find on its distance. The nebula was first recorded by Pierre Méchain on September 5, 1780. Messier recorded it sometime later in the year. It carries two NGC numbers, NGC 650 and 651 thanks to William Herschel's observation of it on November 12, 1787. While it is quite certain Méchain saw the entire nebula Herschel described it as two bright parts connected by a fainter middle. Dryer then decided to give it the two NGC numbers. Most consider NGC 650 as referring to all of it with NGC 651 referring to the northeastern end.

NED, however, uses both to refer to the entire nebula. Oddly it is entered into the first Herschel 400 list under the NGC 651 designation. My note from that taken on July 11, 1985 with last quarter moon just rising at 180x with my 10" f/5 reads "Two oval balls of luminescence which seem to nearly touch. Can easily see how it is assigned two NGC and Herschel numbers. No central star seen."

My image was taken on a poor night, at least poor seeing. I left no notes but the lousy seeing is obvious. What may be a central star-like object is actually a double star poor seeing has blurred into one slightly elongated object. I should have picked up several other stars in the nebula but they are lost in the poor seeing and lousy imaging technique back in 2006 when this was taken. I let read noise ruin fainter detail and severely underexposed it for the way I took it. Today my processing would have removed the satellite in the upper right corner. Not having easy access to the original FITS I reprocessed this from the Luminance and color TIF files meaning the only way to remove the satellite would be to clone it out. I still am lousy at cloning so left it in. Only one is rare, usually, I have many more so I got lucky about satellites but not seeing.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x5' RGB=3x5', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M076

M077

Arp 37/M77 may be the most important entry in his catalog. Though not for the reason that he included it. Arp included it as the first entry under Spiral Galaxies with Companions on Arms: Low surface brightness companions. I can't even find the companion in Arp's image nor can I find anything in the literature on it.

Arp 37 is located in Cetus right on the celestial equator and is about 30 to 60 millions of light years distant. Even the Hubble images can't decide on a distance with one article in 1990 http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1990/13/text/ saying 30 million light years and another in 1994 saying 60 million http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1994/07/ while NED gives estimates of 33 to 47 million light years using Tully-Fisher measurements. Red shift isn't very reliable this close but does show 42 million light years. So spin the dial and pick a distance. Most sources say it is close to NGC 1055 in my previous post. But the distance to it is also all over the board but 60 million light years seems to be gaining popularity for it. For now I'll go with that for Arp 37 as well.

While Arp says it has a low surface brightness companion on its arm I see at least 4 that could fit that description, All outside his image so can't be what he is seeing. The two with red shift distances are over a billion light years further away so meaningless to Arp 37's evolution.

In any case this is unimportant. The galaxy is important for a far different reason. It is the archetypal example of a Seyfert galaxy. Quasars far outshine the galaxy they are in. Seyferts seem to have a similarly active core but one that isn't anywhere near as bright. They can be divided into two camps. Those with very broad emission lines indicating super high velocities for the gasses emitting this light and those with narrower lines indicating very high velocities, just not as high as the first group. The first is called Seyfert 1 and the second Seyfert 2. M77 is a Seyfert 2. But then things get complicated.

At one time it was thought the difference was age as quasars are seen mostly at distances of over 2 billion light years with Seyfert 1 seen, on average, somewhat closer and Seyfert 2 galaxies tending to be closer yet. Since distance indicates age we are seeing quasars at a younger age of the universe than Seyfert 1 galaxies tend to reside with Seyfert 2 galaxies tending to be seen only in the more current universe. So is this due to the black hole that powers each having used up its easy fuel so not being as energetic as in the past? That has been the prevailing idea for some time now but studies of Arp 37 (M77) are causing some doubt.

Lately this idea is falling somewhat out of favor though likely contains some truth. Study of M77 which Hubble and radio telescope arrays can see in fine detail is showing that we tend to see quasars fully face on to the jet emitted by the black hole. They are super bright since we are looking down their gun barrel. This greatly increases its brightness to where it overpowers the galaxy itself. Alignment is critical for this. We see them mostly in the early universe because we see a much higher volume of space and thus by the law of averages see more of them since there are more to see. Seyfert galaxies are just as common as today, just they are too faint to see at that distance because their light is blocked by the inner disk of the galaxy that surrounds the black hole. Only when they are close enough for the galaxy itself to be seen do we recognize their true nature.

Seyfert 1 galaxies have the jet tilted away from us so we don't see it directly but do see what they illuminate. Since we are seeing to near the core we see the high velocities involved. Seen at more of an angle these are hidden by the disk and we see only illuminated clouds further from the black hole and thus clouds with lower velocity. These are dimmer yet so must be closer, on average, for us to see and recognize them. We now can measure the angle of such disks and find those of the few Seyfert 1 galaxies we can measure aren't tilted as much as those of Seyfert 2 galaxies. So it is possible Quasars and Seyfert galaxies are really the same type of object, just that our view is more blocked in the case of Seyfert 1 and 2 galaxies by the inner core of the galaxy itself.

M77 is important here because while its basic spectrum screams Seyfert 2; by using techniques to peer into the hidden regions it shows a Seyfert 1 spectrum. It is both! Just that the Seyfert 1 characteristics are hidden behind the inner ring. Both are seen in a cone illuminated by its black hole. Some papers describe it as an overt Seyfert 2 and a hidden or closet Seyfert 1. NED recognizes this by classifying it as (R)SA(rs)b;Sy1 Sy2.

Both theories may carry some truth. Maybe the James Webb space telescope will further illuminate this situation (sorry, I couldn't resist).

I found more articles on this galaxy than any Arp galaxy I've researched. Far too many to even start to read. There must be over 1000 though I didn't try to count them. With that many there must be at least one for every possible theory about this galaxy. So while this is my longest post, I had far more information available I could sort of understand. But I'm not done yet.

Besides the Seyfert angle Arp 37 has a very large outer disk of faint stars. These are likely due to an interaction with another galaxy.

More on all this can be found at http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m077.html .

One aspect of my image bothered me when comparing mine to others. I see a faint blue halo about the main spiral. It is a bit brighter on the western side. I couldn't fathom any reason my processing could have done this. Then I came across this article about an ultraviolet halo in the galaxy. It's position seems to match my feature. Since my filters block UV light this makes no sense unless the halo is also seen in blue light. Probably not related but it does make me wonder.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap960910.html . The orientation of the linked image is the same as mine making the similarity easy to spot.

My image seems to fit the above description of quasar vs Seyfert perfectly as it contains many quasars and some Seyfert galaxies as well as two that seems to have characteristics of both. One more quasar like (identified as Q/G? on the annotated image) and one more Seyfert like (G/Q?). Quasars range out to over 10 billion light years with a Seyfert 2 galaxy [G(SY2)] at 4.4 billion light years and several clusters over 3 billion light years distant. One cluster I've marked is behind Arp 37's outer arms and invisible in my image. I mark its center only because it is almost on top of one of the larger galaxies seen the disk, the only one without red shift value unless it is a member of the cluster. Unlikely, but they very by only a few seconds of arc so thought it worth pointing out. Another cluster at about the same distance is also positioned behind the disk at the 2:30 position. I didn't mark it. All clusters marked are said to be 2 to 3 minutes in diameter. I've drawn a line to their approximate center. NED only gives their approximate position to an accuracy of +/- about 6 pixels.

There are three asteroids in the image, one of which isn't in the minor planet data base as of November 30, 2016. I've identified it as unknown. Several other similar streaks are seen in the outer disk of the galaxy, but are seen in their entirety in each sub frame so aren't asteroids. The unknown however shows as a very slightly elongated object in each sub frame so is a real moving object. Several have asked me why I don't take just one 40 minute frame. This is one of several reasons. It allows me to separate real asteroid trails from noise created impostors. One of the known asteroids is also in the disk of the galaxy while the other fainter one is above it.

Arp's image:
http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp37.jpeg

Sloan image:
http://astronomerica.awardspace.com/SDSS-9/M77.php

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

Related Designations for M077

M078

M78 is a reflection nebula in Orion. Much of the constellation is full of dust and gas. If one or more super hot star with strong ultraviolet light is around the gas will be ionized. This will cause the hydrogen to glow with a characteristic red color and oxygen to give off a weaker teal green color while some hydrogen gives off a blue color. The red hydrogen dominates causing such nebula to glow a pink color in color images but be green when seen visually in a scope that makes the nebula bright enough to activate the color cones in the human eye. So why aren't they red? Seems the eye is far more sensitive to the teal and blue colors than the very deep red of hydrogen alpha so the eye sees mainly the oxygen while cameras with good red sensitivity (most DSLR cameras block deep red unless modified) will see it as red-pink in color.

Reflection nebula, however, behave differently from emission nebula. Their color depends on the color of the star and its location. If the star is in front of the nebula lighting it like a lamp lights a wall the nebula will take on the color of the star. If it is inside the nebula or behind it, the dust and gas scatter the blue light of the star, no matter what color the star. This then tends to make the nebula blue. If the illuminating star is blue then the color will usually be a vivid blue. The cooler and thus redder the star the less blue dominates. In this case, the stars appear to be in and behind the nebula and are all somewhat to very blue. This causes the nebula to be rather white in areas and blue in others depending on the size of the dust particles and which stars best illuminate which part of the nebula.

Like most of the dust and gas in Orion, it is about 1500 light-years distant. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in March of 1780. The exact date is unknown. He later communicated his find to Messier who recorded it on December 17, 1780. I can't find that Messier ever actually looked at this one. It appears he took Pierre Méchain's word for it.

Southwest of M78 toward the lower right of my image is McNeil's Nebula. This nebula was discovered on January 23, 2004 by Jay McNeil. Some sources incorrectly say February. Later a prediscovery image was found taken in October 1966 by Evered Kreimer while he was taking M78 for a book on the Messier objects. Later after McNeil's discovery when it was lost in the sun's glare it vanished. Finally, in the fall of 2008, it reappeared and has been constantly visible ever since. Most think this was due to the star's brightness change as it is a protostar just starting to shine. Either it flashed for a bit then faded or had temporarily broken out of its birth cloud of dust and gas when first Kreimer then McNeil happened to catch it. Since 2008 both star and nebula are shining rather unchanged from the several years of images I've taken of this field. Will it disappear again? Maybe but I suspect it either blew the dust shroud away or has finally stabilized enough to give a rather constant light. Protostars can be quite unpredictable so changes are still possible. I intend to keep looking at least.

For more on both of these see: http://messier.seds.org/more/m078_mcneil.html

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

Related Designations for M078