NGC1807

NGC 1807 is a star group just west of much larger NGC 1817 in southern Taurus just above Orion. It was first noted by John Herschel on January 25, 1832. It is listed as Trumpler type II2p. Dreyer's description is "cluster, pretty rich, large and small stars." My visual observation from 1982 reads: "Group of bright stars against fainter ones. No real edge. Are the fainter stars part of the cluster?" This was with my 10" f/5 at 65 power. I didn't note conditions.

I'd taken it on High Speed Ektachrome film that same 1982 night and noted the stars were orange not blue. I made a note to try again as apparently something went wrong with my development. In fact, I never mounted the slide I was so sure something was wrong. I never did retake it as it just didn't seem much of a cluster. Now that I've tried again digitally those pesky orange stars won't go away. They look like red giants far off the main sequence. The chance of catching a cluster in this state seemed highly unlikely to me. Doing a bit of research I find WEBDA lists it but has no data on it other than position and magnitude. Other sources say "cluster or star group". Thus there's doubt about it being a cluster. Then I found this paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0407456v1.pdf that says by their analysis and comparison to nearby NGC 1817 it can't be a cluster. In fact, some of its stars are far-flung members of the NGC 1817 cluster with the rest just field stars of random distances. So it is just an asterism dominated by non-main sequence stars. That in itself is interesting as I'd not expect that either from random stars. But it does explain the orange giant stars that so dominated my film image back in the 1970's. The cluster was discovered by John Herschel on January 25, 1832.

The area is rather free of dust as there are many background galaxies that appear to be very distant but not reddened by our galaxy's dust. Four galaxies, all likely part of a group, have redshift data that puts them 230 to 240 million light-years distant. Two are right in the heart of the "cluster". The northernmost, [WMR2009] 037 is listed in 13 X-Ray catalogs, three infrared catalogs and one UV catalog as well as radio. NED says it is Seyfert 1.5 while most other sources say Seyfert 1. In any case, it is one heck of an active galaxy.

South of it is CGCG 469-003 which NED shows as a "Compact" galaxy. It does have a small bright core as seen in many images but that core has a huge fuzzy halo about 80,000 light-years across which is far from meeting the compact status.

The third galaxy has the very unusual designation of 2E 0507+1626 Clump. This is from the Second Einstein X-Ray catalog. I don't know what the clump designation means.

But the strangest galaxy is LCSB S0852P. This catalog I've used before. It is the Low Central Surface Brightness galaxy catalog. NED makes no attempt to classify it. It looks to me like a disrupted spiral. It is full of blue knots likely formed from the disruption. I've included a Sloan image of it.

So while the cluster turns out to be just an asterism of mostly non-main sequence stars the field turns up some quite active and interesting galaxies.

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

Related Designations for NGC1807

NGC1817

NGC 1817 is an open cluster in eastern Taurus just above Orion. It made my list being an object in the original Herschel 400 observing program from the Astronomical League. I logged it on February 29, 1984 from in town (Lincoln, Nebraska) on a poor night. My comments 65x read: "Not much of a cluster but better than NGC 1807 in the same field. I only saw 12 stars of the 16 mentioned in the AL booklet. Out of town without the haze, the others would likely show but not worth the effort." When I posted my image of NGC 1807 I'd not taken this one. I put it on the "force list" which overrides nearly everything to take it. Considering how poor it is, at least for my field of view and aperture, I'm rather sorry I did as imaging nights are few and far between of late. William Herschel discovered this cluster on February 19, 1784. He was obviously more impressed than I was saying it is a "cluster, large, rich, a little compressed, stars from 11th to 14th magnitude."

WEBDA puts its distance at about 6,400 light-years and its age at 410 million years. This would be old enough that its biggest stars could be red giants. I found distance information on only two stars, the brightest blue star to the upper right was listed as being only 281 light-years distant and the orange giant down and a bit to its left at 100 light-years. If right, none are cluster members. WEBDA shows the cluster reddened by a third of a magnitude. Not enough to make much of a difference in its star colors.

It was discovered by William Herschel on February 19, 1784. It is in the original H400 program. My entry from February 29, 1984 from town on a very hazy night with my 10" f/5 reads: "Not much of a cluster but better than NGC 1807 in the same field. I only saw 12 of the 16 mentioned stars. Magnitude limit was about 12 due to severe haze and town lights."

While there are quite a few background galaxies only one has any redshift data at NED. It is the spiral at the bottom center of my image. It is LEDA 097080, an Sa spiral at 250 million light-years.

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

Related Designations for NGC1817

NGC1819

NGC 1819 is an SB0 starburst galaxy in Orion that I've wanted to take for several years. I finally got a chance in December of 2012 but the night was poor for transparency and not so great for seeing. Still, I was able to get a bit of the detail in the very odd core region. The outer faint parts were mostly lost to low transparency which has been a plague here for months. Redshift puts the galaxy some 200 million light-years distant. Study of a type 1A supernova, SN 2005e1, puts its distance at 195 million light-years, very good agreement! At this distance, there aren't many good images around of this one that I was able to find. Best was by John Shuder taken not long before my image. See: http://www.pbase.com/jshuder/image/141511136/large and click on the original size button. His color data wasn't lost in the haze as mine was. I'd wanted to try for some H alpha data on this one due to a note at NED but that wasn't possible in the poor transparency conditions I had that night. I never went back to try again, unfortunately. Here's the note: "NGC 1819. An SB0 galaxy, the H{alpha} image [Fig. 1(c)] reveals a small ring of very bright H II regions in the inner regions, well within the stellar bar. The ring of H II regions is dominated by two bright complexes roughly opposite each other across the ring, and the rest of the ring is filled in by fainter regions. The two bright complexes are sufficiently luminous for this galaxy to be identified as a UV-excess source (Mrk 1194; Markarian et al. 1979). There is no suggestion of any nuclear emission source, nor are any H II regions detected further out in the disk. The bright inner ring resembles what is seen in the anemic SBa galaxy NGC 4314 (Benedict 1980), but NGC 1819 is of an earlier Hubble type and considerably more luminous (M_B_^0^ = 22.1 compared to -18.7 for NGC 4314)."

If the horizontal band in the core is a dust lane then it is highly rotated from where I'd expect it to be. But it might just be an illusion caused by the various, tiny in angular size, structures in the core and not a true dust lane. Either way, it is a very unusual core structure likely related to the starburst activity which may be creating the blobs in the core. So far I've not been able to get an image of the mentioned NGC 4314 which is a much closer galaxy and not nearly as detailed, maybe I can next year. It's too far west for this year. It was discovered on December 26, 1885 by Lewis Swift.

NED has little detail on the many faint fuzzies in the background. Only two of the brighter ones were listed with redshift data. Those were at 1.36 and 1.37 billion light-years so likely related. They are small red blobs to the northwest of NGC 1819. I didn't bother to make an annotated image for only two other galaxies.

The asteroid to the east of NGC 1819 is (44192) 1998 ME2 which the minor planet center predicts was 19.0 magnitude that night. This estimate seems reasonable given my poor transparency.

For those who wish to image this one, note the core detail will require a bit of work to bring out. Most basic DDP or stretch routines will just create a bright blob for the core erasing all but a hint of the detail it contains. It will likely take a lot of work to bring out the detail it contains. I had to process twice, once for everything but the core then another version for just the core then combine the two much as I would when taking long and short exposures of say M42 to bring out the trapezium region. I suppose masks would work just as well but I prefer my method.

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

Related Designations for NGC1819

NGC1857

NGC 1857 is a small open cluster in Auriga about 18,700 light-years distant according to WEBDA. It is an original Herschel 400 object which put it on my to-do list when nothing better was in position. In this case, weather was poor and star clusters cut through haze. My notes from 1985 indicate it reminded me of NGC 2362 around Tau Canis Majoris. However, unlike Tau the bright orange star I was referring to is not likely a member of the cluster. Hipparcos puts the star at only 1500 light-years, far closer than the cluster. The cluster's age is listed by WEBDA at 133 million years, certainly old enough to harbor a massive red giant. That star is SAO 57903, a K5 or K7 star depending on which reference I look at. The cluster is reddened by about 0.49 magnitude according to WEBDA. I don't know if the other orange stars are cluster members or not.

Due to the losses from the thick haze, the less than a dozen galaxies in the full frame didn't show very well and my efforts to reduce the glare around the stars due to the clouds further dimmed them. All were from the 2MASS and none had even a magnitude let alone a distance estimate. Therefore I didn't prepare an annotated version for this field.

The cluster was discovered by William Herschel on September 30, 1780 and is in the original H400 program. My entry with my 10" f/5 on February 29, 1984 on a poor hazy night from town reads: "Tight cluster mostly south of a bright star. Very faint and tight. Until the haze lifted it was lost in the glare of the 8th magnitude star. Reminded me of a faint version of the Tau Canis Major cluster. Will have to look at this one in the country sometime." I can't find that that ever happened.

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

Related Designations for NGC1857

NGC1907

NGC 1907 is the open cluster "companion" to M38. I was surprised that my short exposure time picked up nebulosity around the cluster. Of course, there's quite a bit in Auriga where the cluster resides. Still, it isn't seen often with the cluster, especially in short exposures like I usually take. Both the H alpha and a small blue reflection nebula surprised me. I picked a star cluster to image this night due to the transparency being poor for going faint. I expect this nebulosity would be rather bright on a good night. So why is it rarely seen in images of the cluster? Is it processed out as a gradient?

NGC 1907 consists of some 35 to 50 stars depending on which source you use. I found this extended to its age and distance as well. WEBDA puts the cluster at 5100 light-years and gives it an age of 370 million years. Wikipedia says 4500 light-years and 500 million years old. I found other distances and ages as well.

So how does this fit with M38? Are they true companions? WEBDA says M38 is 290 million years old and is 3500 light-years distant while Wikipedia says 220 million years of age and 4200 light-years. So by WEBDA neither the distance nor age of the two are close so they aren't related. Wikipedia says they are nearly the same distance but even further apart in age so again unrelated. They are apparently just line of sight companions.

There are two asteroids in the image. The one in the cluster (toward the northeastern edge) is (87314) 2000 QJ3 at magnitude 18.2. The other is much fainter and difficult to find. It is near the right edge about the same level as the bottom of the small reflection nebula just inside the extent of the H alpha seen in my image. Both have about the same length of trail that is tilted about the same. It is (344507) 2002 RZ10 and shines at magnitude 19.5 according to the Minor Planet Center. Due to my poor transparency, this night neither are as bright as I would expect for those magnitudes.

The discovery of this cluster is a bit muddled. Most think it was first seen by Guillaume Le Gentil sometime before 1759. William Herschel recorded it on January 17, 1787. One of the two was the first to record it that is pretty sure. The original H400 project does include it, apparently not likeing Le Gentil as the discoverer. My entry from town with my 10" f/5 on February 29, 1984 at 150x under poor conditions reads; Haze bad right now, easily resolved even in the haze. Never in my many years of seeing this cluster have I seen the nebulosity mentioned in the description. I think it is just unresolved stars and not true nebulosity. Even when I used a 30" there was no sign of it." But my own image shows faint nebulosity, especially to the west and north.

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

Related Designations for NGC1907

NGC1931

IC 417 is the "Spider Nebula". It is part of the Spider and the Fly nebula complex. I finally got a chance to image the Fly part, NGC 1931. They are too far apart for me to mosaic the two. I'd need several in the middle. Both are part of the same huge molecular cloud. Each is lit by the intense radiation of the star clusters forming in their respective parts of the cloud. NGC 1931 is the Fly. The spider was an emission nebula but the Fly is both emission (red) and reflective (blue). Some parts are lit by stars not quite hot enough or whose light isn't strong enough to cause the hydrogen to ionize so we see the blue of a reflection nebula. The entire complex, imaged with a wide angle telescope is at: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap061027.html

It was discovered by William Herschel on February 4, 1793 and is in the original H400 program. My entry from February 29. 1984 with my 10" f/5 limited greatly by my viewing from a town of 125,000 reads: "Small sphere next to a star. Appears to be a reflection nebula as the nebula was greatly reduced by the UHC filter. Emission nebulae are enhanced or left unchanged but not reduced by this filter." I don't know what to make of this description. Town lights must have really hurt it. Oddly, I can't find any other log entry of it visually from town or country.

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

Related Designations for NGC1931

NGC1954

NGC 1954 is a galaxy in Lepus I had to image for two reasons. One it is neat, and secondly or maybe primarily I finished building my first telescope in March of 1954 (started in 1953), a 6" f/12 scope which I still have over 60 years later. It turned out to be a superb planetary scope with optics Bob Cox (he did the optics for Mercury and Gemini and edited the Gleanings for ATM's column in Sky and Telescope for years) described as "Approach the eyepiece carefully lest you cut your eye on the image." It started me down this long road. I'm glad NGC 1954 is a very interesting galaxy. The MCG says of it: "Two extremely thin arcs do not appear as spirals, nor as dense rings. They consist of 15 to 20 HII regions." Indeed the outer arcs seem totally unrelated to the spiral structure. Unfortunately, it hasn't been studied that I found so I don't have an explanation for how it looks like it was assembled from parts of 2 different galaxies. Maybe it was, I just don't know. Could the arcs be a "polar ring" like structure? I doubt it but...

It is part of the triple galaxy system of HDCE 0361. The other two members being NGC 1957 and the "red and dead" IC 2132. All have a redshift distance of about 150 million light-years. This system is located at -14 degrees making it very difficult from my latitude. I've had it on my to-do list from day one but no night was good enough to do it justice until I gave up and took it anyway on February 1st. It has been a really cold but cloudy day snowing until after dark. Suddenly the snow stopped. NGC 1954 was barely within one hour of the meridian, my limit at this declination. Without waiting for the scope to cool down I started in on it as this was the best (not great) night for this galaxy I'd had since building the observatory 8 years ago. Since the clouds could return any minute or seeing go bad I took the L data. That resulted in tube currents that turned the bottom of the stars all wonky. It didn't hurt the resolution of the galaxy significantly, however. This low I can only image east of the meridian due to my Meridian Tree that blocks things about 10 minutes before I reach the meridian from the east side and everything for an hour and a half beyond the meridian to the west. Thus I took the color data a different night. seeing was much worse but no tube currents. That meant the wonky points had no color so I blurred the brighter stars on the color image to cover the "points" in the luminance image. Otherwise, those colorless points looked even worse. There are techniques for rounding the stars but I took the easy route and left the "points" in. It never was steady enough to reshoot the luminance as it soon was too far west and lost in the Meridian Tree.

NGC 1954 is classified as SA(rs)bc pec by NED and simply Sc by the NGC project. NGC 1957 is listed as SB(rs:)0- by NED and E by the NGC Project. As a ring structure is seen faintly I'll have to go with NED on this one. IC 2132 is listed at NED as Sa pec: It is an example of what now is known as red and dead galaxies due to their lack of recent star formation. About all the remaining stars are old red stars and a few red giants, the last of the more massive stars. Thus its spiral structure is quite muted. Oddly it seems to have a strong dust lane but for some reason, that isn't forming stars or if it is they are hidden behind the dust. It is a strong IR emitting galaxy as it is listed in the 2MASS survey. That could be due to hot new stars heating dust that emits in the IR part of the spectrum.

NGC 1954 is a huge galaxy. Measuring from the northwestern tip that extends beyond a faint background galaxy to the southeastern tip that seems to turn back on itself, it is 315 seconds of arc long. That makes it some 229,000 light-years in size! Another reason to wonder if this isn't due to the combining of two different galaxies. By comparison, NGC 1957 (should it look like a Chevy?) is only 43,000 light-years across and IC 3132 83,000 light-years in diameter. Large but not unusually so.

Only two other galaxies in the image had redshift data. That put those two far beyond HDCE 0361. Both are shown in the annotated image. A dozen or so galaxies from the 2MASS are also listed at NED, I've noted a couple of them. One is also an X-ray source so likely is hiding something very hot behind its red glow. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything on it. I noted it on the annotated image southwest of NGC 1954. A couple of galaxies that looked interesting to me but were not in NED are marked with question marks. Most of the galaxies in the field didn't have enough IR to make the 2MASS so didn't make it into NED, including one seen at the north end of NGC 1954.

So while NGC 1954 is a very strange galaxy Arp might have included in his Atlas there's just not much at all on the entire field. Maybe someone will eventually study at least NGC 1954.

NGC 1954 was discovered by William Herschel on December 14, 1786. It isn't in either H400 project.
NGC 1957 was discovered by Francis Leavenworth on December 11, 1885.
IC 2132 was discovered by Herbert Howe on February 22, 1898.

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

Related Designations for NGC1954

NGC1977 RunningMan

NGC 1977 commonly known as The Running Man Nebula is part of the Orion Nebula complex thus about 1500 light-years distant. It carries three NGC numbers due to the dark lanes that make up the "running man", NGC 1973, 1975 and 1977. It is also Sh2-279 among other designations. How a nebula gets its common name is usually lost to history but in this case, the story goes that the experienced amateur, Jason Ware, a top astro imager, showed the nebula to a neighbor who said it looked like a running man. He ran the name by his astronomy club, the Texas Astronomical Society and the name stuck. This was some 20 years ago or so the story says.

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

Related Designations for NGC1977 RunningMan

NGC1985

NGC 1985/Ced 57 was originally classed as a planetary nebula by William Herschel when he discovered it on November 13, 1790. It isn't in either H400 program. Many afterward also considered it a planetary so it is in many planetary catalogs. Today it is classed as a reflection nebula. Still, it shows quite a bit of H alpha pink in my image. I didn't put an Halpha filter on it. Probably should have. The field is full of very faint nebula and one "bright" reflection nebula. vdB 45 is seen around the star HD 245259 in the lower right portion of my image. I moved NGC 1985 off center to pick this one up. It does appear to be a true reflection nebula but oddly it is listed in the galaxy catalogs as UGC 03327 and MCG +05-14-001 and others. Even Zwicky picked it up as a galaxy, UZC J053640.9+315116.

These nebulae are in Auriga west of M37 and south of M36. The entire field seems awash in very faint nebulosity. It would be a good candidate for those who put many hours into an image. Since it contains a vdB nebula I'm hoping Tom Davis will get it imaged with his new toy.

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

Related Designations for NGC1985

NGC1999

NGC 1999 is a small reflection nebula embedded in the Orion Molecular Cloud located about 1500 light years from us. This cloud covers much of the constellation of Orion. Where O stars formed out of it, it glows red. Where more normal stars formed it shines blue as a reflection nebula. NGC 1999 is a reflection nebula though the whole field is glowing faintly red due to scattered O stars in the area, including those that cause the famous Orion Nebula to glow. Again I got killed by clouds. The result was that I got ONE blue frame, ONE green frame and three H alpha frames before the clouds rolled in. That doesn't give me much to work with. Add to that a bright satellite that went through from lower left to right center, first at the end of the green frame then the start of the blue (actually it is going right to left). Then while the blue frame was being taken a communication satellite drifted slowly through the field. These are stationary in the sky so as the earth rotates the stars and NGC 1999 drift past. That made the nearly horizontal blue streak above NGC 1999. By using a process called Sigma Reject I can eliminate such satellites if I take three or more frames. With one there's nothing that can be done but let them color the image. Again the stars are funny blue due to there being no red frame. At the center of NGC 1999 is a Bok Globule where other stars may be forming. Like most reflection nebula this one is very blue in color. You can see a Hubble shot of it at:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2000/10/image/a/ It is sometimes referred to as the "Keyhole to the Heavens" due to the shape of the Bok globule at its center.

The nebula was discovered by William Herschel on October 5, 1785. It is in the original H400 observing program. My log entry from March 16, 1985 with my 10" f/5 on an average night at 60x reads; "Small planetary like reflection nebula. Seems much smaller than the 12'x16' listed. To me, it is a small donut with a small central hole. A star there makes it hard to see. Apparently, I'm only seeing the center 2' of the nebula. An interesting object if M42 was not so close." The size currently given for it is 2' so where the much larger size came from I don't know. Maybe the writer was seeing some of the H alpha that fills the entire area. That's far larger than the 12'x16' given size, however.

This was an early image before I knew much about taking Halpha targets and combining RGB data. I never even took luminance data. While I took one red frame for some unknown reason it wasn't used creating cyan stars. Processing didn't even attempt to remove satellites from the color frames. 5 minutes for red and green is very data starved for this object. Definitely one for the reshoot list.

14" LX200R @ f/10, Ha=3x30'GB=1x5', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC1999