NGC0877

NGC 877 is a barred spiral galaxy in Aries about 170 million light-years from us. Tully Fisher measurements closely agree ranging from 150 to 180 with 170 being the median value. While I found little on it I think it quite possibly interacting with NGC 876 or at least it has interacted with some other galaxy as it has a faint plume to the northeast that curves around somewhat following the shape of the galaxy. It has a plume to the east off the southeastern end of the galaxy that appears to run right by the northeast edge of NGC 876's disk possibly covering it up. It ends in a puff to the northwest of NGC 876's core. While I've seen NGC 877 described as a grand design spiral it looks far too messed up for that classification to me. Its arms are mostly just arm segments that have no order to them. A major one runs from the west side of the core up and over the north end of the galaxy yet isn't connected to the core, bar or anything that I can see. An arm segment below its start is rather linear and made up mostly of knots. The edges of the arms along dust lanes show quite a bit of H alpha pink in my image indicating a lot of star formation is going on in these areas. Another indication of possible recent interaction. Also, note the designation of LIRG in its classification. That stands for Luminous Infra Red Galaxy. This usually is caused by dust heated by massive star formation. It was discovered by William Herschel on October 14, 1784. It isn't in either H400 program

NGC 876 is an edge on SAc: spiral that is very red. While its southwestern disk is clearly seen to the end the northeastern end seems cut off or missing. Possibly hidden behind the plume of NGC 877 though I found nothing in the literature about this. While it looks rather sedate and the red color would indicate age it does have some spectral lines that might indicate it is more active than it looks. Its distance as indicated by Red Shift is virtually the same as NGC 877. The Tully Fisher distance measurements are all over the place, however, ranging from 170 to 300 million light-years with a median value of 220 million, far beyond the redshift distance. Since those values are scattered I favor the redshift value. It was discovered by R.J. Mitchell on November 22, 1854.

UGC 01761 is a low surface brightness rather disturbed looking spiral that is classed as an irregular galaxy of the Magellanic class. It too has a redshift distance of 170 million light-years. It has no Tully Fisher estimates.

NGC 871 is a small bright SBc galaxy with a redshift distance of 160 million light-years though Tully Fisher says 140 million light-years. Various estimates range from 110 to 160 million light-years so there's some agreement at the top end. While bright it shows limited detail, mostly due to it being seen nearly edge on. It was discovered by William Herschel on October 14, 1784 when he found NGC 877.

NGC 870 is a red compact galaxy below it. While they make a pair it is only by perspective as NGC 870 has a redshift distance of 750 million light-years so is some 4.5 times further away than its "companion." It was discovered by R. J. Mitchel on November 22, 1854, the same night as NGC 876.

Another reason for my imaging this field is the presence of a Flat Galaxy Catalog galaxy, FGC 0270. Unfortunately, NED has no data on it other than saying it is an Sc spiral. Is it a member of the same group as that of NGC 877? Possibly but it appears more distant to me. Likely it is somewhat between the group's distance and that of NGC 870.

Unfortunately, this field is in a part of the sky not covered by most surveys so that is about all I can tell you about this field. Obviously, there are a lot more galaxies in this field as well as what appears to be a likely galaxy cluster southwest of the bright star below NGC 877. Unfortunately, all but 4 or 5 very uninteresting red spots of a galaxy are listed in NED with the interesting looking ones not even listed.

While I again fought the weather for this image I was able to scrape up some reasonable frames though only one usable green frame could be found. Fortunately, that's the least important color and appears to have done no harm.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RB=2x10' G=1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC0877

NGC0884

NGC 884 is the eastern half of the famous double cluster in Perseus. WEBDA puts its distance as 7,600 light-years. Its age is listed as 11 million years. This makes it a very young cluster and explains the lack of red giant stars. Reddening is listed at just 0.56 magnitudes. Oddly this disagrees with the figures for the other member, NGC 864. Most consider the two as being the same age and very close together in reality as well as by perspective though likely not as close as our perspective makes them. These figures make the eastern member 1 million years younger yet it apparently has more red giants than the "older" cluster.

The cluster's discovery goes back to 130 B.C.E. when Hipparchus saw the double cluster. I don't find if he was able to see it was two separate objects though I doubt he did. Tycho Brahe and Johann Bayer also saw it but I found no dates. Both seem to have seen it as one object. Bayer gave both the designation of Ç Persei. Calling the eastern member "h" didn't happen until sometime in the 1840's. The next date is when Giovanni Hodiera recorded it sometime shortly before 1654. As he used a crude telescope he likely knew of the double nature of this fuzzy patch in the sky but still recorded it as one object.

This was one of my very earliest images. This one was taken a year after I took NGC 864. I'd discovered some of my errors in taking bright star clusters but not all of them. While I reprocessed 864 as it was so bad I've not yet done so with this one. This is my early 2008 processing of December 2007 data. It would benefit with a complete reprocess as I did with its companion but this will have to do for now.

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

Related Designations for NGC0884

NGC0918

NGC 918 is a SAB(rs)c: galaxy in Ares about 60 million light-years distant. It is seen through a lot of dust reducing its brightness by about a magnitude in visual light, more in blue and less in red light which gives it a rather reddish hue. The galaxy hosed SN2009js 5 years ago. There's little known about this galaxy as it is located in the Zone of Avoidance where most galactic studies fear to tread. The southern half seems crossed by parallel bands of stars that are quite evenly spaced. Is this real or caused by dust in our galaxy obscuring it in bands. The POSS 2 IR image shows no hint of these bands which could indicate dust is to blame but if they are made up of hot blue stars then they'd not be seen in IR. The dust we do see in the image is far too diffuse to have created such a fine structure as these bands so I vote for the bands being real but what causes them. Some galaxies obviously interacting with a companion sometimes show bands much like these. M51 would be an example. But this is a very lonely galaxy. It has no companions. NGC 918 was discovered by John Herschel on January 11, 1831.

I tried to put a lot of time into this one but I ran into an equipment failure, the 35 year old home built power supply I used to power the dew heater died and I didn't know it. I tried to take 2 hours of luminance and 1 hour for each color to bring out the foreground nebulosity over three nights. These were done after midnight while I was sleeping. I had no idea the power supply had died until a couple days later. The dew shield was sufficient in the early evening when I was around to see how it was doing but I'd get up in the morning and "clouds" had ruined the rest of the night. Finally a couple nights later dew was so bad it happened while I was up and the cloud sensor said it was very clear yet I was getting "clouded out". I trudged to the observatory muttering things not suitable for this post and found the fogged corrector and dead power supply. I unplugged it (no switch) that somehow blew the fuse for the isolation transformer that powers everything. Now you really don't want to know what I was screaming rather than muttering. Of course, it takes a micro fuse I didn't have nor does anyone local. By the time I was up and running again I never was able to reshoot this object. I had to pull the boat early from the lake and use its battery plus trickle charger to run until I got a new power supply and run without the isolation transformer which isolates me from some nasty power issues deep in the north woods.

The result was of the three nights of luminance data the first night had great seeing but hit by dew. The color data was useless. Second night seeing was poor but dew issue light so both luminance and color were usable. The third night was dewed out completely.

The field was full of asteroids. If not for them I'd not do an annotated image as only NGC 918 had redshift data at NED. But combining two nights of luminance data turned up 12 different asteroids with 13 asteroid annotations on the image. How 12 became 13 is that one and only one was in the frames of both nights, (117336) 2004 XP15. Only one has a name (9682) Gravesande. Its naming citation reads: "Willem J. 's Gravesande (1688-1742) was a professor of mathematics, astronomy and philosophy at Leiden University. During his life, he wrote many textbooks on mathematics and philosophy, and he is also important as an exponent of Newton's philosophy in Europe. The name was suggested by W. A. Fröger." The 's is not a misprint that is his part of his sir name, 's Gravesande. The J is for Jacob in case you were wondering. The asteroids in the first night's frames have no color data. The brightest on the second night do. This is why some brighter ones have color trails and some don't.

This is yet another for the redo list on a better night.

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

Related Designations for NGC0918

NGC0925

NGC 925 is a rather low surface brightness barred spiral, SAB(s)d, in Triangulum with a lot of HII regions. I was surprised at how obvious they are in my image. In many of my images, they come out blue rather than pink as the super bright and hot stars formed in it dominate give the blue color. That doesn't seem to be the case with this galaxy for some reason. Its spiral arms are rather distorted as if it has encountered another galaxy. There are several possible candidates all well out of my images field of view.

The distance to this galaxy seems rather poorly known. It does lie beyond the local group but how far beyond seems to be uncertain. I found lots of independent distance measurements whose error bars don't come close to overlapping. I'm going to say 30 million light years but I found estimates for twice and half this distance. The redshift of this galaxy and several others out of the field say about 14 to 16 million light years. Usually, redshift isn't all that reliable this close to us but with several within 4.3 degrees having almost the identical red shift it does seem to support this much closer distance. But if that was correct I'd expect more resolution of the galaxy than I got. Distance determination using Cepheid variables seen in the galaxy give as wide a variation as other methods. Why this wide discrepancy I don't know. Maybe dust obscuring the reference star more than others? NGC 925 was discovered by William Herschel on September 13, 1784. It is in the second H400 observing program.

The field is rather sparse. NED shows no redshift data for any other galaxy in the image and only lists 15 other galaxies in the field, all but one without even magnitude data. That one is the elongated smudge near the west edge above center-line near a very blue star. It, [OBC97] N06-2, is listed at magnitude 14.5 which seems rather bright.

Finally, an October image. The weather was so bad this month this is one of only 4 objects taken in October. All taken the one clear night, the 19th UTC, that month gave me.

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

Related Designations for NGC0925

NGC0959

NGC 959 is a spiral galaxy in Triangulum. Its distance is an unknown, at least to any degree of accuracy. Redshift puts it at only 17 million light-years. This does rather closely agree to the redshift of NGC 925 that it is considered related to and I imaged back in 2009 http://www.spacebanter.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3053&d=1280601739 . Non-redshift distance estimates put it 33 to 56 million light-years. When I wrote up NGC 925 I had a similar distance problem finally deciding on 30 million light-years. In this case, we have an HST image of the galaxy -- http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/NGC_959_-HST09042_14-R814GB435.png . Based on the resolution in that image I'd estimate it a bit further. I'm going to disagree with my earlier estimate and guess it to be 40 million light-years. That would put it's size at about 27,000 light-years across. NED classes it as Sdm: while the NGC project disagrees saying Sc/I. I'm not sure how an Sc spiral can also be irregular but that's what they say. The size I get is reasonable for a Magellanic spiral or an irregular galaxy.

The galaxy was discovered by Édouard Jean-Marie Stephan in 1876. NED has little information on the rest of the field. The only other galaxy with any data is the spiral MCG +06-06-053 directly east of NGC 959. Redshift puts it at 590 million light-years. It has a faint plume to the south. It is a far larger galaxy. Ignoring the plume it is 85,000 light-years across and with the plume, it is 140,000 light-years across. A respectable spiral either way.

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

Related Designations for NGC0959

NGC0973

This image shows an interesting group of galaxies centered on NGC 973. Located in the constellation of Triangulum. NGC 973 is about 200 million light-years away. It is an interesting edge-on spiral with a very well defined dark lane. Below it is IC1815 also at 200 million light years. It is a barred spiral. Since its arms are only an undefined disk with no dark lanes or new stars to define them, just a disk of old stars, it is classed as an SB0 galaxy, the zero referring to the lack of spiral arms, just a disk of old stars. Unlike NGC 973 it is seen nearly face on though most images of this group fail to show the large area of old stars I picked up making the galaxy look quite different. I can't tell if this is a disk or a huge halo of stars. In any case, it is likely the result of a collision in the distant past with another galaxy in this group. For an example of how this galaxy is normally imaged see the Kitt Peak image at:
https://www.noao.edu/kpvc/observers/n973.html
Note the above image has south up and mirror-reversed so is upside down and backward from my image below. The link to a larger image was broken when I last tried it.

NGC 973 was discovered by Lewis Swift on October 30, 1885. IC 1815 was found by Stephane Javelle on January 20, 1898.

Beside IC 1815 is another edge on LEDA 213027 also at 200 million light years. Below it is a galaxy I can't find anything on, 2MASX502342688+3224339ID. I have no redshift data on it so can't calculate its distance. Far to the right, in my image is another spiral galaxy PGC 9751. While it appears much like the others it is 400 million light-years away, twice the distance to the others. There are a lot of other galaxies in the image, a couple also carry 2MAX number, the rest have no catalog number that I can find. In any case, I have no information on any of them other than their positions in our sky.

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

Related Designations for NGC0973

NGC0974

This is an image of a group of galaxies, including 6 NGC galaxies (4 entries in the catalog) and others in the field. The group is located in Triangulum about 200 million light-years away. At least the major galaxies are at that distance. Are they related? It appears two NGC 969 and NGC 974 may be interacting. NGC 969 is classed as S0 but appears to be a SB0 to me or maybe even SBa. It is obviously somewhat torn apart as stars are sprayed everywhere. NGC 974 is a ring type spiral with faint arms coming off of a rather football shaped ring. The western arm is rather well defined while the eastern one is a mess. It has a hint of a bar so is classed SAB(rs)b. Between these two is NGC 970 with consists of a pair of elliptical like galaxies in a common envelope. Is that the case or is one in front of the other with their star balls overlapping? There's no redshift data on this one so we don't even know if they are related to the first two. They certainly would fit Arp's classification for galaxies with the appearance of fission. In this case mitosis might be the better term.

Even more confusing is the case of NGC 971. The Sky says it is a double star. The annotated image has a line drawn to a point half way between the two stars. The NGC project is quite confused about this one. In the finder image they point to a rather bright orange star below the double star. But they give the coordinates for a position 28" north of the double star but with the same RA as the star. NED also says it is a star but gives the same wrong coordinates as the NGC Project. The NGC Project says "Lord Rosse's diagram and micrometric measurements with respect to NGC 970 point exactly to the star." Likely some error has misstated the stars declination. I put in three lines drawn to these three spots. In any case it isn't a galaxy.

The remaining NGC object is NGC 978, another double galaxy. Both are classed as S0. The large upper galaxy has a red shift that puts it at 207 million light years while the small southern one is at 189 million light years. Likely they are much closer with the difference being due to relative motion. Neither appear distorted and the little one seems to hide the fainter portions of the large one as well as darken it so I'll assume it is in front of the larger galaxy as redshift would indicate. I see little to indicate interaction so doubt they have come very close to each other though it's possible they will in the future. To darken the galaxy behind it has to have significant dust in its disk, rather rare for SO galaxies.

There are only 2 other galaxies in the image with redshift data. CGCG 505-008 appears double though one of the cores is likely a star. Which is the star is the question. Since the cores of such objects tend to be red I'm going to say it is the eastern (left) one but my color data is poor (more on that in a bit). NED's position is half way between the two as if it sees this as one object.

Of more interest is NPM1G +32.0101. It is not classified by NED. It appears to be a double ring barred spiral. A very unusual galaxy. That outer ring is hard to explain, at least for me. Any ideas out there how this could happen?

The field is little studied. I've labeled all easily seen galaxies listed in NED. I left out three very low surface brightness galaxies that show as very faint smudges in my image. I did pick up one. NGC 1023 GROUP:[TT2009] 39. The other three carry this same catalog prefix, only the number at the end is different. Normally NED will explain a catalog name but it refuses in this case. I have no idea what it means. NGC 1023 is over 6 degrees north and a bit east of my field and in Camelopardalis. Many rather bright galaxies aren't even listed in NED. I've marked a few with a question mark as they seem much brighter than many it did include. The omitted ones likely didn't make the 2MASS catalog. One did make the 2MASS flat galaxy catalog, 2MFGC 02031. The Flat Galaxy Catalog requires galaxies be very flat for listing. It appears the 2MASS Flat Galaxy Catalog is far more lenient as to who it admits to its catalog.

NGC 969, NGC 974 and NGC 978 were discovered by John Herschel on November 22, 1827. NGC 970 and NGC 971 were found by Bindon Stoney on September 14, 1850.

Clouds made a mess of this one. I almost didn't even try to process it. Blue frames were totally lost to clouds, one luminance frame was very weak and foggy but I did include it as it seemed to help to do so but only if I used a noise rejection stack. These, I've not had much luck with when only having 4 with one pretty lousy. But it worked better than 3 (cost me some asteroids however) so went with it. Now about the missing blue. There's a technique for creating green from a red and blue image. This is used to make color images from the DSS plates for instance. I did a similar math process but extended it out rather than interpolating an in-between value. Thus my color is suspect. Still I think it rather accurate. This one is on on the reshoot list more for more time to pick up the fainter tidal sprays I missed due to the thick haze and gunk I was imaging through. The way this winter is going it might not happen this year. Weather here is awful and I thought it bad last year!

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RG=2x10x3 B interpolated from the R and G, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick

Related Designations for NGC0974

NGC1003

NGC 1003 is a somewhat unsymmetrical near edge-on blue spiral galaxy on the western border of Perseus. In fact, the western ansa of the galaxy is in Andromeda, not Perseus. It has the same redshift as nearby NGC 1023/Arp 135. By redshift, it is 20 million light-years distant but by Tully Fisher measurements it is about 35 million light-years from us. Tully Fisher measurements of Arp 135 put it at 34 million light-years. It appears the two are related with the same redshift but are really about 35 million light-years distant. Redshift is notoriously poor for distance at such close distance but the similarity in redshift would indicate they are likely related and traveling through space together. NED classifies NGC 1003 is SA(s)cd. The NGC project says Sc. Assuming the 35 million light-year distance the galaxy measures some 87,500 light-years if the faint cloud just above the 0.020 in the annotated image marks the far extent of the western arm. It appears connected in the raw FITS files rather than a separate object. A similar faint extension is seen on the other side as well. That would make it a good size spiral galaxy. It was discovered by William Herschel on October 6, 1784 and is in the second H400 observing program.

While there are a lot of blue spirals around it not a single one is listed in NED. NED lists a redshift for only two other galaxies in the image, one UGC 02126 has a very similar redshift so is likely related. It, however, is only about 10,000 light-years across. It has a weak spiral structure seen almost exactly face on. While many galaxies, blue and red, are seen across the image only a very few of the larger ones are listed in NED, but unfortunately, all are from the 2MASS catalog without redshift data. I've identified the few in NED. While a dozen more or so are in NED they are starlike to indeterminable due to wide positional error bars so weren't listed in the annotated image. There appears to be a galaxy cluster in Andromeda west of NGC 1003 which I've noted on the annotated image. Again, NED has nothing on it even though some of the galaxies are rather red this appears to be due to distance and not IR emission that the 2MASS would pick up.

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

Related Designations for NGC1003

NGC1022

NGC 1022 is a strange galaxy in eastern Cetus about 2 degrees below M77. Redshift puts it nearby at about 57 million light-years. A single Tully-Fisher measurement says 60 million light-years while a single estimate based on the size of its ring says 85 million light-years. Going with the 60 million light-year estimate I get a size of a bit under 50,000 light-years so it isn't a very large spiral. NED classifies it as (R')SB(s)a;HII Sbrst. The NGC Project says simply Sb while Seligman says (R)SB(rs)a pec. A lot of disagreement here. The NGC Project says no bar. The odd blue strip through the core of the galaxy in my image appears to jog around the core in a very odd fashion. But I can't say I see what looks like a traditional bar.

A note at NED reads: "This is a peculiar dusty ringed galaxy... It is classified as a barred galaxy ..., but our Fourier analysis shows that the phase of the m= 2 amplitude is not maintained constant in the assumed bar region, indicating a spiral-like nature of this structure, seen also in the polar angle map." It appears they have a problem with the bar as well.

The galaxy appears like it has recently interacted with some other galaxy but as other notes say there's no obvious candidate. But nothing is said about it possibly being the result of a merger. That, to me, could explain a lot about the issue of a bar or not a bar, the rings and outer smooth arms. The smooth arms being tidal plumes being pulled back into the spiral rather than true arms. The starburst nature of the core is also explained. High-resolution images of the core show it made up of several red, near starlike, regions. Odd for an interaction but not for it being in the process of digesting another galaxy. The attached pseudo color Hubble Space Telescope image doesn't help to confirm the idea of a bar and explains the red regions as red dust. That also accounts for the reddish glow in my image to the northwest side of the core. The HST image was taken in blue, red and near infrared with the red mapped to green and IR to red then the whole thing likely color shifted to approximate what red green and blue filters would see.

This galaxy was discovered by William Herschel on September 10, 1785. It is in the original Herschel 400 observing list. My notes with my 10" f/5 on September 11, 1985 at 60x reads: "Small, nearly round puff of a galaxy. Hint of an irregular outer shell. No nucleus seen." I indicate this was a good night. I was observing from this lake so it was low in the sky and I was working over the mist rising from the lake though it must be light since I didn't mention it.

Being in an area that surveys seem to avoid no other galaxy in the image has any redshift data. With nothing but a couple hundred galaxies known only by their coordinates with no data, most without even a magnitude and the result of automated plate surveys I didn't prepare an annotated version. Like many objects taken in late November weather and seeing was poor. I needed many nights into early December to get enough frames to process this one.

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

Related Designations for NGC1022

NGC1027

NGC 1027/IC 1824 is a rather sparse open cluster in Cassiopeia just west of the "Heart" Nebula. In fact, the western edge of it is seen in the upper right corner of my image and faint outer parts of it stretch right across the cluster. The cluster, however, is not associated with the nebula. That cluster is IC 1805. The heart nebula is thought to be nearly 7000 light years distant while NGC 1027 thought to be about 2500 light years distant. So why did I image such a dud of an open cluster? Well, It looked great in my 6" f/4 and is one of the objects in the first Herschel 400 list. it was discovered by William Herschel on November 3, 1787. I have been imaging those on that list that my observing log indicated were rather interesting, as time permits. Apparently, I had a wait for my next peculiar galaxy and filled it with this image. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The outer traces of the Heart Nebula (the nebula is far too large for my FOV) do make it a bit more interesting. I make no note of the nebula in my log even though it would have been in the 31x field of view. Being an open cluster I probably never tried a nebula filter. My comments with my 10" f/5 at 60x on a night with some aurora reads; "Large, loose, cluster around a 6th magnitude field star. Bright and easy but not very interesting. Surprisingly easy to find considering the lack of guide stars in this sparse area of the sky."

Dreyer's description: "Cluster, Large, Scattered stars, one 10th magnitude star." This is interesting as the bright star in the cluster is 7th magnitude SAO 12402. Though it apparently isn't a member of the cluster having a parallax that puts it about 179 light years away. The orange star to its NE is about 10th magnitude as is the blue star to its upper right. Both have a V magnitude of 9.67 and are members of the cluster. Several other 10th magnitude stars are visible in the cluster as well. So I am puzzled by Dreyer's comment.

Attached image has been reduced to 1.5" per pixel to save bandwidth. There was no benefit from the larger scale that I saw.

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

Related Designations for NGC1027