NGC2359

Thor's Helmet is NGC 2359. Though being in Minnesota I guess I should call it Viking's Helmet. Though Viking helmets had no horns contrary to cartoons. Seeing was poor again making for odd shaped stars but transparency was very high so the shot goes quite deep. I used 10 5 minute shots for the luminosity image and my usual 3 5 minute shots for the color. This is a bubble blown by a Wolf Reyet star. That's the brightest one in the bubble, a bit right and up from its center. The gases released by the star are interacting with a large nearby molecular cloud resulting in a red shock front where the energy of the collision is highest. Again, distance is uncertain but most feel it is somewhere around 15,000 light years away. A long distance to see through the dust and gunk of our galaxy. If the distance is right then the bubble is about 30 light-years across. Rather large for a Wolf Reyet bubble. It was discovered by William Herschel on January 31, 1785. It is in the second H400 observing program. There's a lot of info on this guy on the net. A Kitt Peak shot of the center along with info on this guy is at:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap021205.html

Unfortunately, this is a very early image before I knew much about image processing or how to control read noise of the camera. Being below 13 degrees south it is usually caught in bad seeing. It's been on my reshoot list but so far seeing hasn't cooperated in over 10 years.

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

Related Designations for NGC2359

NGC2366

NGC 2366 is a dwarf galaxy in the M81 group. While it is a strange galaxy it isn't strange enough to make Arp's list. It is located in the constellation of Camelopardalis. That might sound like it is a camel but it is a giraffe and a rather faint one at that. This is a pair of galaxies. The tiny one is NGC 2363. Both are about 10 million light-years away so in our backyard. Massive star formation is going on in both galaxies. Two huge star clusters have formed in the star-forming region of NGC 2366. In fact, this is the original NGC 2366 as William Herschel described it when he found it on December 3, 1788. Though he did mention the rest of the galaxy all he meant as his find was this region. Only later did the name come to be applied to the entire galaxy. Their blue light completely overwhelmed my filters so the red color of the ionized hydrogen is pretty well lost though small regions in other areas of the galaxy are very obvious. I had better luck with the companion where the star cluster didn't saturate my system. Note the HII region ends with a shock wave at the northeast (upper left) end of the pink nebula. This likely is created by the light pressure of the super hot blue stars in the cluster. Whether this is really a separate galaxy or just part of NGC 2366 seems unknown as yet. Many years ago Hubble took a great shot of the star-forming regions that are so blown out in my image. Learn more about this at:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1996/31/image/a/

NGC 2363 was discovered by Ralph Copeland on March 9, 1874. He mentions the star-forming region Herschel found and references that region as NGC 2366 so by 1874 the name hadn't yet been applied to the entire galaxy. Note too that NGC 2366 lies within the blue halo of NGC 2366. It even appears to expand to include it though it is possible this is a coincidence and NGC 2366 lies either in front or behind the halo. Still, it may have caused it if a separate galaxy passing by.

The obvious galaxy in NGC 2366 above the star-forming region is 2MASX J07284539+6912186 but I couldn't find anything on it. Though it likely resides hundreds of millions of light years beyond NGC 2366. There are dozens of anonymous even more distant galaxies in the image.

This is an early image of mine when I didn't know how to control stars and prevent blowing them as well as the HII region of NGC 2366 from blowing out and saturating. Nor did I know how to combine Halpha data in a galaxy image. Another for the retake list that may not happen.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10 HA=1x30 (too little) RGB=2x10x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2366

NGC2371

NGC 2371-NGC2372 is a planetary nebula in Gemini. William Herschel found it twice in one night not realizing it the second time. Nor did Dreyer notice it when assembling his catalog so the two entries for the same object stuck. Herschel made his double discovery on March 12, 1785. It is in the original H400 program. My entry with my 10" f/5 at up to 300 power on March 16, 1985 under good transparency but lousy seeing reads: "Two bright puffs that seem brighter in the centers of each. Tonight the seeing is poor and it appears like two objects. On better nights it appears to be a single object and I even wondered how anyone could think it two. Tonight it is just the opposite. Steady seeing is crucial for this object."

While seeing wasn't really bad for this one it wasn't all that good. Then I screwed up the processing of the images when I used the wrong dark file on them. It wiped out the very faint details, mostly at the edges of the frame so didn't hurt the nebula much but did wipe out some interesting galaxies. I didn't have the right dark so started to take some. Had a setting wrong so deleted the darks and redid them. One problem, I deleted the light frames, not the bad darks. The new darks overwrote the deleted files so I couldn't recover them. OOPS. So I had to go with the poorly processed light frames. Least I didn't delete the processed frames, only the original ones. I wish the software would force them to read only status so you can't make that mistake. (Edit: Now I do exactly that and never processess anything on the imaging computer. All files are copied to another computer for processing -- I learned my lesson the hard way.) Anyway, I had to crop the edges of this one to remove the screwed up parts and lost several dozen background galaxies. Bad seeing (Edit: And my ham-handed processing) causes the irregular halos around the brighter stars and especially the central white dwarf that created the nebula. I can't find a consensus on its distance. Say 3900 light years.

This was an early image of mine when I didn't understand proper imaging technique nor how to process images so stars didn't dominate. In fact, I did it all wrong both in processing, some of which is noted above, and in taking the data. I need to redo this one on a good night. While I used over twice as much luminance data as I normally take it doesn't begin to go as deep as I do now with half the data due to all the mistakes I made. But it is, so far, the only image of this one I've taken so will have to do.

I haven't tried to identify the galaxy cluster in the lower left corner of the image. It is a rather rich cluster. (Edit: I didn't try to research an image as I do today.)

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=3x30' RGB=3x5', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2371

NGC2385

The field is centered on NGC 2385, a Sb galaxy per NED and S? per the NGC project. The galaxy is about 200 million light-years distant in the constellation of Gemini. It has a nice find dust lane showing we are seeing it virtually edge on. There's a rather large halo of stars around it.

My real interest lies with NGC 2388 to its east and down slightly. It is a Luminous InfraRed Galaxy (LIRG) with a rather odd structure. Dust lanes are unusually red. The entire galaxy appears reddened by all the dust it has. NED classes it as S? while the NGC project says simply S. It too is about 200 million light-years away.

The very blue galaxy above it is NGC 2389. It has a rather complex arm structure that appears to come off the ends of a bar. But the NGC project classes it as Sc. NED does better saying SAB(rs)c. Both it and NGC 2388 have HII emission lines. Redshift puts it about 190 million light years distant. The difference from its companions is likely due to relative motion about their groups center of gravity rather than a real distance difference. In fact, Tully-Fisher measurements put it a bit over 200 million light-years away. Such measurements aren't available on the other two.

None of these three galaxies appear to be interacting though all seem disturbed in some way: Large faint halo of stars for 2385, Unusually heavy dust for 2388 and very complex, ill-defined arm structure for 2389.

Visual astronomy created the NGC catalog. This resulted in mistaken identity as visual observers would sometimes think they saw faint glows around stars that were more likely due to high haze, poor seeing or both. We have several examples in this image. NGC 2386 is a triple star while NGC 2390 and NGC 2391 are just single stars. So this NGC group contains three real galaxies and three mistakes. The group is cataloged as WBL 142 though often referred to as the NGC 2389 group being named for its brightest member.

Another designation for the group is HDCE 0444. This includes KUG 0724+341 at the very top of my image a west (right) of the other three. It is a very blue galaxy NED classifies as "Spiral". Its redshift puts it at 220 million light-years with no other measurements given. So it appears to be a true member of the group, just on the outskirts as we see it from our perspective.

To the lower right is another pair of galaxies. NGC 2379, an SA0 galaxy as NED sees it or S0 as the NGC project classes it. It is about 190 million light-years distant. So it is likely related to the others to its northeast but isn't officially a member of the group. In fact, it and the nearby spiral are considered part of the WBL 141 group even though the spiral has a very different redshift. The spiral is NGC 2375, classed as SB(s)b and SBb by the NGC project, has a redshift that puts it about 360 million light years distant. Nearly twice the distance to the others in the field. It has a small, high surface brightness companion on its arm. Arp had many such galaxies in his atlas, many so distant little detail was visible. Did he miss this one or omit it for some reason.

In many cases in Arp's atlas, the companion had no redshift measurement so it was impossible to verify it was a true companion and really was on or near the arm. This is no exception, unfortunately. In fact, the companion isn't even listed in NED! It could almost pass as a star in my image but the PSF is very wrong for a star and quite right for a galaxy when you look at the raw data. It is clearly a galaxy in the Sloan image as well. Yet NED never picked it up from the survey.

Another double star in the area was mistaken for a fuzzy object by visual observers and has the designation NGC 2378. Its discoverer was none other than Édouard Stephan of Stephan's Quintet fame. He didn't do so well with this observation. His description: "Two stars, very faint and very close which, occasionally seem to be enveloped in a nearly imperceptible nebulosity."

The galaxy in the lower left corner is the edge on spiral FGC 0633/UGC 03879, classed as Sbc. Its redshift puts it about 230 million light years distant. Again likely part of the NGC 2389 group. Of the galaxies in the image with redshift data all but NGC 2375 appear to be part of a common group. Several other galaxies are seen at its western end but none are in NED. Even though the Sloan survey covered this field it, or maybe NED, picked up only some of the galaxies. I don't know why.

No other object in the image has redshift data. Though there are three asteroids.
(80481) 2000 AJ33 Mag 18.2
(155472) 1998 SY98 Mag 19.9
(223904) 2004 VK56 Mag 19.6

Conditions were rather poor for this image. Note the gaps in the asteroid trails where clouds pretty much blocked everything twice for a couple minutes. Still it came out better than my first try.

NGC 2375 was discovered by George Stoney on February 20, 1849.
NGC 2378 was discovered by Édouard Stephan on February 8, 1878.
NGC 2379 was discovered by John Herschel on March 6, 1828.
NGC 2385 and NGC 2388 was dicovered by William Herschel on February 4, 1793.
NGC 2386 was discovered by Lawrence Parsons on January 1, 1876 Could a hangover from New Years Eve explain his mistaking stars for a galaxy?
NGC 2389 was discovered by William Herschel on February 5, 1788.
NGC 2390 and 2391 were mistaken for galaxies by Robbert Ball on December 10, 1866.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2385

NGC2392

NGC 2392 is commonly known as "The Eskimo Nebula" as visually it seems to resemble a face buried in a fuzzy parka hood. This image is taken and displayed at 0.5" per pixel rather than my normal 1" per pixel. This image was taken on a night of the best seeing I've had here since building the observatory or since. It was at least twice as good as I normally get. I further improved it using L-R deconvolution. This is the process developed when Hubble turned up with a bad mirror. If all the errors are due to the same thing (a misfigured mirror in Hubble's case) then it is possible to put that out of focus fuzz back where it belonged. It is a long and slow process when done correctly. Normally seeing errors are very random so this process doesn't work well. But when seeing is very good then it can make things even better as it has in this case. It took about 30 minutes doing over 1 billion calculations a second to accomplish this feat. I normally don't have conditions that allow this processing but it worked in this case.

It was discovered by William Herschel on January 17, 1787. It is in the original H400 program. My visual comments from that on March 16, 1985 with my 10" f/5 at up to 300x on a below average night reads: "Small two shelled planetary with a bright central star. Long one of my favorites. Like most planetaries, it holds up well under high power. Turbulent seeing limited power tonight." It is in eastern Gemini. Distance estimates vary a bit but most are around 2,900 to 3,000 light-years.

Being bright I used only 6 two minute exposures for the detail and 3 two minute ones for each color. All were taken at 0.5" at a time I was normally binning most images 2x2. The data was taken on October 29, 2006. I could take color data back then but had no idea how to process it at the time. So this one wasn't processed until a year later.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x2'x1 RGB=3x2'x1, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2392

NGC2415

NGC 2415 is a strange galaxy in Gemini or is it Lynx? Some sources say Lynx while others say Gemini. The Sky puts it about 50 seconds of arc south of Lynx and thus in Gemini. In any case, it is about 180 million light-years distant by redshift. Many sources classify it as a questionable Magellanic irregular galaxy but it certainly has well defined, if peculiar, spiral arms. Several notes at NED say it is a double galaxy showing no tidal effects. I don't know if they mean two galaxies in the same line of site or it is a merger of two. I have trouble seeing either but it is very bright and in many images, including mine, seems to have two cores. The one to the right is actually a star cloud when seen at a higher resolution than I had this rather poor night.

It was discovered by William Herschel on March 10, 1790. When son John recorded it (date unknown) he described it as "pretty bright, considerably small, round, very gradually very slightly brighter middle, mottled but not resolved, almost planetary nebular". In many images, much of it is burned in much like planetary nebulae often are in survey images. It is in the second H400 program but my log is lost and I left no other notes on it. My memory doesn't go back to the 1980's all that well.

Turns out the tower of babble got me again. I'd already picked this one up back in 2009 when imaging Arp 250. That is the odd double galaxy to the upper right. I carried it originally in my 09-04-09 update. That image can be seen at http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/ARP_GALAXIES/ARP250/ARP250L4X10RGB2X10X3R.JPG. It was taken during my "blue period" when I didn't do G2V color balancing right and everything came out too blue. Conditions for it were a bit better so it goes a bit deeper with better contrast as I was imaging through high clouds for this image.

The field is not well studied for galaxies being in the Zone of Avoidance but some galaxies had redshift data. I've listed all in the annotated image even those without redshift data as there aren't that many to cover.

I find several smaller galaxies that are likely dwarf companions to NGC 2415 as they too have a similar redshift. Though the one right beside it had no redshift and the faint smudge below it wasn't to be found in NED or SIMBAD. It's likely in some catalog somewhere but with thousands to search through I didn't look further. Oddly NED says the spiral east of Arp 250 is Arp 250 and gives other designations for the real Arp 250. SIMBAD identifies this false Arp 250 as LEDA 2063674 but has no redshift or other distance data. The real Arp 250 is in his category for "appearance of Fission" and does look a lot like mitosis in progress but really is two colliding dwarf galaxies only 70 million light-years distant.

I measure NGC 2415 at about 50 million light-years in size. Not all that big of a spiral. Arp 250 is only 14,000 light-years across with each being half that size. Dwarf galaxies indeed.

NED shows the galaxy cluster Abell 0590 on the east side of the image. It is near but not centered on an obvious galaxy cluster to the northwest. I found no galaxy count for this group but Abell 590 is listed as richness class 1 which means it has about 50 to 70 galaxies in it that fit in brightness between the third brightest member and the one 2 magnitudes fainter. It has no distance measurement but is listed as distant class 6 which means that most of the galaxies are magnitude 17.3 to 18. Most in the group to the NE are fainter so where are the galaxies in this cluster. I put the label where its core is. No diameter was given but it was described as being compact. That fits the group to the northwest but nothing much is seen at its position.

The brightest member of the group to the NW is interesting. NED classifies it in some catalogs as a quasar and others as a galaxy. Considering its red color and that it has a physical size I vote for galaxy. Most say it is an HBLLAC galaxy. That stands for high energy BL Lac galaxy. This is what Wikipedia says about BL Lac objects.

"A BL Lacertae object or BL Lac object is a type of galaxy with an active galactic nucleus (AGN), named after its prototype, BL Lacertae. In contrast to other types of active galactic nuclei, BL Lacs are characterized by rapid and large-amplitude flux variability and significant optical polarization.[1] Because of these properties, the prototype of the class (BL Lac) was originally thought to be a variable star. When compared to the more luminous active nuclei (quasars) with strong emission lines, BL Lac objects have spectra dominated by a relatively featureless non-thermal emission continuum over the entire electromagnetic range.[2] This lack of spectral lines historically hindered BL Lac's identification of their nature and proved to be a hurdle in the determination of their distance."

Those with an unusually high energy cutoff have the leading H, those with a low energy cut off have an L prefix. Other prefixes are found but these seem to be the ones that are in current use. Read more about this at https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Urry1/UrryP6_2_6.html

Four asteroids are visible in the image, well one is really faint thanks to the clouds I had to image through. Details on them are in the annotated image. Magnitudes are estimates by the Minor Planet Center. A fifth one should have been in the image but it was labeled as needing positional data and I found no trace of it though it should have been visible if the magnitude was reasonably correct.

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

Related Designations for NGC2415

NGC2419

NGC 2419 is a giant, but distant, globular cluster. Globular clusters like M13 and M92 are orbiting our galaxy and are usually no more than 60,000 light years away They orbit out into the halo of our galaxy then dive back through the disk, out the other side and back again to make another loop. But some make bigger loops than others. A very few make extremely large loops. NGC 2419 is one of those. It's so far out it used to be thought it was an intergalactic wanderer. It was thought to be wandering around after escaping from its home galaxy. WRONG. We now know it is, in fact, orbiting about our galaxy but much farther out than most of our satellite galaxies such as the Magellanic Clouds. Distance to this guy is still a bit uncertain but say about 275,000 light years from us and 300,000 light years from the core of our galaxy. If it were placed where M92 or M13 is in our galaxy it would far outshine them and be an easy naked eye object in our sky though we'd still need a telescope to see its stars, a few might be within reach of a pair of binoculars, however. The cluster itself would be as big as the full moon! Outlying stars would make it even larger than that. That's how big and bright this cluster really is. It is now thought to be right at the apex of its orbit, as far from the galaxy as it can get and ready to head back in. So come back in a few hundred millions of years and you might get a much closer view of it, though the earth may be on the wrong side of the galaxy when this happens. Just my luck.

Two really bright stars cast a blue haze over the cluster which I've removed in part. The nearest is SAO60232, an A5 star of magnitude 7.2. That means it is one third as bright as a magnitude 6 star, the dimmest normally considered visible to the naked eye. Beyond it is WDS STF 1118 a wide blue and orange double star (WDS; Washington Double Star catalog). The pair shine at magnitude 7.95 making it one sixth as bright as the dimmest star you can see naked eye. Interestingly the blue star is a close double with a separation of only 0.4" of arc. Way smaller than the blob it makes on my image. So it is really a triple star system. The bright star on the left is 8.0 magnitude and type G0 making it almost the same color as our sun, just a tad bluer. Our sun is a G2 star. Because this was taken through a haze that scatters blue light you do see a blue haze around it as well. That's just the same as the sun making our sky blue even though it isn't really blue. The haze scatters blue light more than other colors giving it a blue color. This was taken early in my digital imaging career when I didn't have the tools to deal with haze I have today. I need to reprocess this one but there are hundreds that could benefit from reprocessing and I just don't have the time so this will do for now.

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

Related Designations for NGC2419

NGC2420

NGC 2420 is an open cluster in Gemini not far from the far more famous Eskimo Nebula. It is another Herschel 400 object I picked up. It was discovered by William Herschel on November 19, 1783 using his 18.7" reflector. In looking this one up I found this is about all the various sources I found agree on. Even the visual description varies greatly. One using a 12" Dob said it was mostly a smudge that became more obvious if he moved the scope -- a common way of enhancing faint visual objects. His drawing shows only the bright orange stars and none of the fainter blue ones. Yet my log says: "Tight, rich cluster... It is a good object well worth the side trip when looking at NGC 2392". And I was using a 10" scope. Things get worse when looking at other factors. Various sources put it at 7 to 10 thousand light-years away. One says it is in the Perseus Arm of the galaxy, another that it lies 3000 light-years above the plane of the galaxy so wouldn't be in any arm of the galaxy. Its age is said to be 1.1 billion years in WEBDA but a press release by the NOAO ( http://www.noao.edu/outreach/press/pr02/pr0204.html ) puts its age as 1.7 billion years. Either way, it is unusually old for an open cluster. These are normally torn apart after much less time by tidal forces in the galaxy's disk. So the age, either of them, support the idea it is well above the plane of the galaxy. Of course, it will have to dive through the plane and spend some time below the plane as well but if its orbit carries it well above or below the plane then such trips would be few aiding its longevity. The NOAO release says its stars have the same metal content as the sun but they are younger. Also, its location is very odd for having the necessary ingredients to even form a cluster let alone one with this metal content which may mean it formed in the disk and somehow got its orbit changed. Could this mean it formed in some galaxy ours has cannibalized? That might explain its odd orbit but then other pieces of that galaxy should be evident and I see no mention of that. Lots more work is in order here!

The field has several "bright" and interesting galaxies but only two have redshift data. They appear to be related as they are less than a minute of arc apart and have almost the same redshift values. The rest have no redshift data. I annotated the brighter ones anyway. I'd not have annotated the image at all except it contains 4 rather obvious asteroids all a bit fainter than 19th magnitude.

This image was taken over several nights. Blue data was highly focused by good seeing that was lost due to clouds. This made the blue stars much smaller than those taken other nights by the luminance, red and green filters under much poorer seeing. Even blurring the blue to try and make it match I ended up with some color fringing I couldn't seem to solve. Seems combining color data taken under near one arc second seeing with that taken under 3.5 arc second seeing doesn't work all that well. Note seeing got so bad for the luminance data I used only 3 of 8 frames taken so this doesn't go as deep as usual. After lots of work, this will have to do.

Please note I don't trust either my color balance nor that of the NOAO image. Mine is iffy due to the treatment I gave the blue data to try and match the much poorer red and green nights that may have put too much blue into the blue stars. The NOAO image seems too orange. The bright "red" star below the NOAO image is shown as being G0 which usually means a rather white star, not the red star their image shows. It is "bright" (magnitude 9.22) as it is only about 200 light-years away.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=3x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2420

NGC2440

Hubble took the definitive photo of NGC 2440, a small 76" of arc planetary nebula. Their photo was taken with narrow band imaging of various elements and thus the photo's colors are false but the detail tremendous. I had to work through the earth's atmosphere to get what little I could. Seeing was lousy making for rotten stars, with deconvolution I was able to pull some detail out of this tiny planetary. The star at its center doesn't show. You do see two bright regions on either side of it. The star shines with almost all of its light being in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum. Thus it doesn't get through our ozone layer so we can't really see it from earth. It is possibly the hottest star known. The surface temperature of our sun is about 10,000 F degrees. This guy has just recently puffed off its outer layers exposing the core where the fusion that powered the star took place. That went dead when the outer layers were lost exposing the super hot core. These cool rapidly so this one was caught soon after the change. Its temperature is more like 400,000 F degrees! 40 times hotter than our sun! This is why it emits mostly ultraviolet light. It is these outer layers that glow red and blue in my shot. The Hubble image can be seen at:
http://hubblesite.org/image/2058/news_release/2007-09 Their image has south up so is upside down from mine.

This is another very early image of mine taken with poor technique and limited processing skills. Also, it is three degrees below my usual 15 degrees south declination limit. This further limits my seeing considerably. It's been on my redo list now for some time but seeing that low just never seems to happen. The vertical elongation of the stars is due to atmospheric diffraction. I now can compensate for that in processing but couldn't when this was taken. This stretches the luminance stars into short streaks while the color images no longer align properly. I managed to deal with the color issue back then but not the luminance issue. Deconvolution just made that worse, in fact. Also, I severely underexposed the luminance data. This low a minimum of 60 minutes is needed but I took only 25 minutes and did so in too short of an exposure to control read noise.

NGC 2440 was discovered by William Herschel on March 4, 1790 and is in the original H400 observing program. My log from March 23, 1985 with my 10" f/5 at up to 300x on a typical night reads; "2 small arcs surrounded by a large elongated outer shell. Seeing was too unsteady to be sure of detail. Elongation is along the same axis the two arcs are seen on." Those inner arcs are the bright starlike objects in my image and are quite obvious in the HST image linked to above.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=5x5' RGB=3x5', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2440

NGC2449

NGC 2449 and IC 476 are a possibly interacting pair of galaxies in Gemini about 1.1 degrees southeast of Pollux. While at the same redshift there are no tidal plumes between the two. NGC 2779 looks pretty ordinary but smaller IC 476 is rather odd. The arm coming off the southwestern end of the bar is rather straight with only a slight curve and is rather red indicating little star formation for some time. The other arm comes off a short bar and is highly curved as well as blue. NGC 2449 appears to be a red and dead spiral with little star formation going on. Its spiral structure seems a bit odd with a somewhat blue segment splitting into two, both of which turn red. No arms seem to originate at the core but start well away as if from an invisible bar. It likely is my poor resolution giving this illusion still it may be an indication of interaction between these two.

ASK 248011.0, IC 2205 and NGC 2450 are also at about the same distance so likely part of the same group.

NGC 2449 was discovered by Édouard Stephan on January 18, 1874. NGC 2450 was also discovered by Édouard Stephan but four years later on February 26, 1878. IC 476 was discovered by Stephane Javelle on January 30, 1892. IC 2205 was also discovered by Stephane Javelle but also four years later on January 16, 1896.

There are three asteroids in the frame, two of which are fainter than 20th magnitude though one has such a short trail it appears rather bright for its magnitude. The other is very bright at magnitude 16.6 per the minor planet center. It's naming citation reads:
(6618) Jimsimons = 1936 SO
Jim Simons (b. 1938) is an American mathematician and philanthropist. He is the co-inventor of the Chern-Simons form, which has important applications in physics. Along with his wife, Marilyn Simons, he co-founded the Simons Foundation, a charity that supports math and science research.

If curious about the Chern-Simons form see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chern%E2%80%93Simons_form

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

Related Designations for NGC2449