M104

M104 is commonly known as the Sombrero Galaxy. This galaxy is way too far south for me to image well. Unfortunately, the weather cleared suddenly before the scope had time to cool I started the image. I had to catch it before it went into my Meridian Tree as when it would come out 90 minutes later it would be partly behind the observatory wall. Tube currents from not letting the scope cool for an hour resulted in flat bottomed stars. Also, due to the time constraint of the Meridian Tree, I was limited to only 40 minutes of luminance data which limited how much of its outer halo I could pick up. I've processed it both to show the galaxy normally and then again with a strong stretch to bring out as much of the large halo as possible with my limited exposure time.

M104 is a very strange spiral galaxy. Spirals are composed of two classes of stars. Population I stars make up the disk of the galaxy, home to the spiral arms. The disk is made up mostly of dim stars like the sun and dimmer but these can't be seen easily. The disk also contains the super hot, short lived blue stars. Since these are thousands of times brighter than sun-like stars they dominate the show and we see them as blue spiral arms. The core of the galaxy is made up almost entirely of very old dim stars but they are clustered much closer together than stars in the disk and there are far more of them so we do see their light as brighter than the disk. Since only yellow to red stars live long enough to dominate in the core we see it as a golden to orange color. These old stars are called population II stars. They also occupy a third region, the halo. All spiral galaxies have a spherical halo of population II stars. They are so thinly spread however they don't normally show up in photos. But a very few spiral galaxies have dense halos. No one has given a definitive answer as to why. It may have to do with how they cannibalized other galaxies. In any case, M104 is one of these large halo spirals. In fact, it has a huge halo. In my photo, it can be seen to extend beyond the spiral arms of the galaxy.

Seen only a few degrees from edge on, M104 has a thick dust lane yet little in the way of blue stars in its disk. The disk, while not golden sure isn't blue either. This indicates little star formation has gone on for a billion years or so in its arms, which are tightly wound. It is thought that a spiral will turn into a giant elliptical galaxy if it cannibalizes enough other galaxies. It could be that M104 is in a transition stage between being a young vibrant spiral to being an old elliptical. Though they do usually have some star formation near the core. It appears that may be the case for M104 as well. I first processed the image to show the disk and core but suppressed the halo. I then reprocessed it as best I could with the tools I had at the time to bring out the halo. Due to conditions and the time constraint I was under after the sky cleared, I couldn't pick up its full extent.

M104 was discovered by Pierre Méchain on May 11, 1781 but according to Seligman it was noted by Messier but not added to his Catalog. Others added it to his list later. William Herschel recorded it on May 9, 1784 causing it to be entered in the NGC as NGC 4594. It is in the original H400 observing program. My entry for April 23, 1985 on a fair but somewhat moonlit night using my 10" f/r5 at up to 150x reads: "Large, edge on galaxy with an easy dust lane and enormous central bulge. An old favorite but the night is getting foggy so low and it is getting clobbered good!"

For more on this one see: http://cseligman.com/text/stars/m104.htm and http://messier.seds.org/m/m104.html

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

Related Designations for M104

M105

M105 is a large elliptical galaxy in Leo. It is part of the Leo I group which includes M95 and M96 which is located about 40 million light-years away. M105 is the large spherical (E0) galaxy. It is also known as NGC 3379. To the NE is NGC 3384/3371 (SB0), also a member of the group. It's another of those galaxies with two NGC numbers. NGC 3384 better fits its position in the sky so is considered the main designation of the two. Below it is NGC 3389 (SAc) a very blue spiral galaxy. Its redshift puts it at a distance nearly twice as far away as the Leo I group. Thus, it is more likely a member of the nearby Virgo Cluster. The color contrast between a spiral that is currently forming new stars and the reddish hue of elliptical galaxies that haven't had much if any star formation for billions of years is quite striking.

Some of the galaxies in the background are part of the Zwicky galaxy cluster 1045.8+1251. It is listed as 45 minutes in diameter (larger than my long diameter of 33 minutes) and to contain 120 galaxies. He listed it as "medium distant" the second closest class out of 5. How these distances were determined I don't know. Redshift was not used. One paper says his near and medium distant classes are quite accurate when compared to redshift data but the other classes tend to overestimate their distance.

The image contains 4 asteroids. Easiest to find northwest (right) of M105 is (50572) 2000 EM39 at magnitude 17.3 East of NGC 3384 near the left edge of the image is (49344) 1998 WC4 at magnitude 18.8 (seems at least 0.5 magnitudes brighter than the Minor Planet Center estimate). See the annotated image for the other two. The Minor Planet Center is now tracking over 440,000 known asteroids. It's no wonder they keep showing up in my images! (Edit: The total is now over 820,000 as I type this in February 2017)

The image also contains galaxies beyond the Zwicky cluster as well as a few quasars. I've included an annotated image pointing these out along with their distance in billions of light years. Galaxies are labeled with a G in front of their distance. Quasars have no label, just their distance. Note one galaxy, nearly 3 billion light-years away, can be seen right through NGC 3384 showing how little dust and gas galaxies of this type have and thus, why star formation ceased long ago.

A photo of this area taken by the 0.9 meter telescope on Kitt Peak is at:
http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/images/d5/m105.jpg

You can read more about M105 at:
http://messier.seds.org/m/m105.html

I included all 4 luminance frames but one was poor. I debated leaving it out as it reduced resolution but did also reduce noise as well.

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

Related Designations for M105

M106

M 106 is a large spiral galaxy about 20 to 25 million light-years away. A lot seems uncertain about such a major nearby galaxy. There is debate about its distance, about which galaxy group it is in and even as to its classification. Some say it is a peculiar Sb or Sc spiral. others say it is a cross between a spiral and a barred spiral and others add more oddities to its classification. It does seem to have an inner section and faint outer arms.

The large galaxy to the right (west) of M106 is NGC 4248. I've been asked to tell you where in the sky these objects are. This one is in the constellation Canes Venatici -- the Hunting Dogs. A rather obscure constellation high overhead during the middle of the night in the spring.

You can read more about it and see photos from many others at:
http://messier.seds.org/m/m106.html
Though the photo on the main page shows only the very center of the galaxy at very high contrast so is impossible to recognize as being the same as the one shown below. Even the others in the links in the article often don't look much like mine as they show only the inner core region of the galaxy.

M106 was discovered by Pierre Méchain in July of 1781 and never actually seen or recorded by Messier but was added to his list by others anyway. NGC 4248 was discovered by William Herschel on February 9, 1788. It is in the second Herschel 400 observing program. My notes from which got lost in the move to the lake 12 years ago.

Later I added H alpha data to show the regions of star formation and the odd jet coming up out of the galaxy. My skills were very limited when this was done. I made a few tweaks but really need to retake it correctly. This will have to do for now.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x10' Ha (if used) 2x20', RGB=2x10' for Ha image 3x5' for original image, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M106

M107

M107/NGC 6171 is a globular cluster one of dozens of globular star clusters in Ophiuchus. While discovered Mechain who contributed many to the Messier list this one never made the list until modern times when this oversight was corrected by adding to the original list.

M107 is unusual in that has regions obscured by dust. The most obvious area is north of center in my image. I couldn't find out if the dust clouds are in the cluster or just foreground objects. The cluster is more scattered than most. Some sources put it about 21 thousand light years away.

This has been a jinx object for me. Seeing this low in my sky has been a major issue every time I tried. This time clouds and severe extinction was a problem. Atmospheric dispersion this low is another problem so I went with a pure RGB image to tighten up the stars. I used these to make a pseudo luminosity image after aligning them to remove the prism displacement by our atmosphere. Unfortunately, severe clouds got in the way, especially with the blue frames. Even though taken highest in the sky the blue and green signals were damaged by clouds. Blue far more than green. I was able to salvage 2 of 5 frames of each color. While the green frames used were not through clouds the two blue ones were rather badly obscured. The color data is rather suspect because of this. I used 4 blue frames to make the pseudo luminosity image but only two in the color data. Thus adding the color frames comes up two short of the pseudo luminance frame. I used them as they were taken the highest with the best seeing. Cost me some faint stars but the ones I got were sharper because of it.

Due to it being so low in my skies I'd not imaged it since going digital. Thanks to the Meridian Tree I can't catch it at its highest and have to do most of it to the east. Because of this, I had to wait years for a good enough night to go that low with usable seeing. Extinction was bad but the air steady. So severe were extinction and cloud issues, even 10 minute subs didn't come close to burning out the core. The image is several magnitudes fainter than my normal images due to how low it is and lack of luminance data. For more on it see: http://messier.seds.org/m/m107.html

14" LX200R @ f10, Pseudo L=11x10', R=5x10' GB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M107

M108

M108 is a near edge on spiral galaxy just off the bottom of the bowl of the big dipper. It can be put in the same low power field of view with M97, which was one of my first successful shots with the 6" f/4 when I was first getting starting with the observatory. Quite a few more distant galaxies can be seen in the background. The distance to this guy is thought to be 45,000 light years. Visually the bright star near the center makes it difficult to view all the detail that would otherwise be seen. Toward the left and right along the bottom is part of a distant, uncataloged galaxy cluster. Least, I can't find it in any such catalog I have. You can read more on this guy at: http://messier.seds.org/m/m108.html

This one is in dire need of retaking as it was a very early image before I knew what I was doing. Someday I'll get to it.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=9x5' RGB=3x5', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for M108

M109

A more normal barred spiral and one much more like our own galaxy is M109. It is located about 50,000 light years away. Again that is only an approximate distance. The other bright galaxies in the field have about the same radial velocity so they are probably associated with M109 gravitationally. The bright one at the bottom right is UGC 6923. The one under M109 is UGC 6940 and the one to the left is UGC 6969. Oddly, the smudge directly below UGC 6969 and above a bright star wasn't in the Aladin database I checked. The dimmer one right of it was, it is LEDA 2832098. For more see: http://messier.seds.org/m/m109.html

This was one of my very first digital images and shows it. I do need to retake this one as I lost star color and faint features to my ignorance at the time.

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

Related Designations for M109

M110

NGC 205 is also known as Messier 110 though the latter designation is debatable as it was never part of a listing Messier ever made. He discovered it on August 10, 1773. But he never put it on his list. It was added to the listing in 1966, 149 years after his death. It, like M32, is a satellite of M31, the Great Andromeda Galaxy, and is classified as E5 pec. Most elliptical galaxies are red in color but NGC 205 is unusual in that its core region is blue and full of faint dust pockets. A tidal tail connects it to the outskirts of M32 seen in the lower left corner of my image.

This is a complete reprocessing of my 2007 data. While my original processing in early 2008 is very good for the time I reprocessed it hoping to better show the tidal tail and the dust in the core region. Also, I'd not processed it for an annotated image other than to point out long known globular clusters in a mono version. With better database data I decided it needed to be revisited, especially after I found many errors in the globular catalog when doing Andromeda IV on the other side of M32. As with that image, it turns out many of the globulars listed in the Bol catalog (Bologna Globular Cluster catalog) are, well, baloney. While all the classic globulars were correct (I've included their G number for cross-reference) many of the Bol objects had redshifts that put them over a billion light-years distant meaning they were really spherical distant galaxies. I've preceded the catalog name with *Cl for globular clusters and G for galaxies when redshifts were given. Unfortunately a few had no redshift data. For those, just the Bol number is listed with no attempt to classify them either way. That will take redshift data which was unavailable.

The improved processing also allowed me to bring out several planetary nebulae. Considering how close the field is to the edge of M31 it is hard to say if those more distant from NGC 205 belong to it or to M31 itself. I didn't try to make any distinction and doubt that is possible in any case. A couple of the planetaries were so faint or close to other objects I drew a line to them even when the label was on the right side of the object. For those, you may want to enlarge the image as they are only about 2 pixels across so too small to be seen on most screens without enlargement. Losses from JPG compression makes them even harder to see than they were in the uncompressed TIF images which at 15 megabytes are too large for posting.

For those wondering where the old G numbers came from they date to 1977 when Sargent, Kowal, Hartwick and van den Bergh did a search for globulars related to M31. This is listed at NED as the SKHV catalog. All with redshifts I checked are valid globulars, unlike the Bologna catalog that apparently expanded on the 1977 study only to be fooled into including some background spherical galaxies.

There are other late additions to the Messier list, none as late as M110 however. See http://messier.seds.org/addition.html for details. Then there's the issue with M102 which is still not resolved. Also, 4 others have been lost and "recovered" though also not without debate. http://messier.seds.org/missing.html
For SEDS general coverage see: http://messier.seds.org/m/m110.html

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

Related Designations for M110

MAFFEI1

A galaxy of a different color --

Maffei 1 was originally cataloged as a nebula. It is SH2-191 in the Sharpless catalog of emission nebula for instance. It was recognized as a huge elliptical galaxy by Paolo Maffei in 1968 along with a nearby giant spiral Maffei 2. It lies only 0.6 degrees from our galactic plane. If in clear skies it would be a naked eye galaxy like the much closer M31 and M33. Some claim it would be brighter than M31 to the naked eye. I find that overly optimistic. Maffei 1 is thought to be about 10 million light-years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia. The error bar for that is about +/- 1 million light-years. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/368339

Normally I see galaxies of this color only when they are several billion light-years distant and thus reddened by that billions of light-years of intergalactic gas and dust. Here I got the same color from only the dust along the plane of our galaxy. I believe it is varying levels of dust in our galaxy that makes the apparent dust lane in Maffei 1 and is responsible for its very lopsided shape. Seen by the 2MASS survey at 2 microns which penetrates the dust in our galaxy it looks very different.
Paper:
http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=com_article&access=standard&Itemid=129&url=/articles/aa/full/2005/06/aa1566/aa1566.right.html
Image:
http://www.aanda.org/index.php?option=com_image&format=raw&url=/articles/aa/full/2005/06/aa1566/img32.gif

While Maffei 1 was thought to be an emission nebula, ironically, the blue reflection nebula northeast of the galaxy in my picture, ZOAG G135.91-00.47 was listed in the Zone of Avoidance Galaxy catalog, as a galaxy, about the same time Maffei was discovering the galaxy wasn't a nebula. It wasn't until 2003, thanks to the Midcourse Space Experiment it was determined to be a nebula forming new stars. That put it in the MSE catalog as [KSP2003] J023709.98+594231.0. To the north-northwest of the emission nebula less than 2 minutes away is another nebulous patch. This one isn't as blue. The only thing I find in Simbad in the area is centered a few seconds of arc below the star that seems embedded in it. Simbad classes it as an HII source though it is mostly listed in catalogs for CO masers and other IR catalogs. It also made the Midcourse Space Experiment catalog as MSX6C G135.8914-00.4580. For an HII region, it is an odd bluish color rather than HII pink.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=8x10' RGB=4x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for MAFFEI1

MAFFIE2

Sh2-197 is a very unusual entry in the Sharpless catalog of Nebula. The catalog was compiled in 1959 from the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey plates. #197 fooled Sharpless and nearly everyone else into thinking it was an emission nebula. In 1968 Paolo Maffei looking at IR sources discovered it was really a galaxy so obscured by dust it is only faintly visible in visible light. I see no hint of it in my blue filtered data, it is weak in green light and stronger in red though still quite weak. Sharpless can be excused for his error on account that such galaxies weren't even dreamed of at the time he compiled his catalog. Also its location, just below the Heart and Soul emission nebulae would strongly favor it being a bit of related nebulosity. Thanks to Maffei's discovery it is now known as Maffei 2. Maffei 1 I posted a while back is also incorrectly listed in the Sharpless catalog as Sh2-191.

WISE, the very deep IR survey satellite took a great image of the Heart and Soul Nebula that shows both Maffei 1 and 2 at the very bottom. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/wiseimage20100524.html Maffei 2 is seen at the very bottom just left of center. In the full size image it is seen to be a nice barred spiral with a drawn out arm. Likely it would have made Arp's list had it not been hidden from earthly eyes. To the right beyond a pair of "blue" stars is Maffei 1 which is very "blue" in the false color image. It has to be false color since all of the light is far too red for our eyes to see even if it could get through our atmosphere. The WISE image caption makes no mention of these galaxies which I find strange.

The two are thought to be about 10 million light-years distant and are in the constellation of Cassiopeia. Due to the highly variable obscuring dust and gas in our galaxy what visible light that gets through results in a very distorted image. In a comparison image I've placed the WISE image at the same orientation and image scale to the right of my image. Some of the stars can be identified in both images which cover the same region of the sky. Some of the bright regions at either end of the bar can be identified in my image, especially the "hook" going up from the bottom of the bar. A hint of the drawn out arm is visible below the "hook" region. To see it at these wavelengths Wise was cooled to within a 8ºK of absolute zero by a block of frozen hydrogen. The satellite was decommissioned after the last of the hydrogen was gone.

My fall weather last year (this fall is even worse) created havoc trying to get this image. I tried on many nights but only three were usable for the luminance channel and two for the color channels. Still I managed 12 luminance frames and 4 each for each color. I probably could have used more. Still I found amateur images up to 22 hours long that didn't show any more than mine does.

In processing I removed most of the nebulosity from the Heart and Soul Nebulae as they detracted greatly from even seeing Maffei 2. This is one tough object!

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=12x10' RGB=4x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for MAFFIE2

MAGAKIAN13

As you know I like obscure objects. You don't get much more obscure than this nebula. It isn't listed in either NED nor SIMBAD yet is quite a good nebula for imaging. It goes by several rather obscure names such as Magakian 13 and NS 2. It is also in the galactic nebula catalog of galactic nebula cataloged by all other galactic nebula catalogs under the designation GN 00.42.0. Oddly SIMBAD contains many entries from the GN catalog. Most are fainter than this one so why did they miss it? I've seen it described as being a bipolar nebula but I'm not seeing that in my image. The nebula is located in Cassiopeia about 1.4 degrees southeast of the far more famous NGC 281 PacMan nebula. In fact, it was a wide angle shot of the nebula I saw that first introduced me to this nebula. Being so nearly anonymous I wasn't able to find any distant estimate on it. Edit: SIMBAD has now picked it up under GN 00.42.00.02.

To further confuse the issue the Deep Sky Observer's Companion lists it under the name DG 4 which is in SIMBAD but at different coordinates over 1.5 degrees away. The POSS server shows nothing at the SIMBAD location for DG 4.

The area is apparently deeply obscured as no really identifiable galaxies are seen in the image. Though a few orange stars in the nebula are listed at NED as galaxies in the 2MASS catalog. At least that might be the case. The position error bar includes these objects but is centered on empty locations. Due to the uncertainty and lack of magnitudes or other clues I've not prepared an annotated image.

One object in the image most sources do include is LDN 1299 which, while centered a bit below this object is listed as being 4.5' across and thus includes this nebula. So for those wondering how to find it use LDN 1299.

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

Related Designations for MAGAKIAN13