NGC2718

My target was the face on barred spiral NGC 2718 but serendipity stuck again. Also in the field was UGC 04703 a neat pair of possibly interconnected galaxies in Hydra. Redshift puts NGC 2718 at 190 million light-years and UTC 04703 a bit closer at 180 million light-years. They are obviously tiny in comparison to NGC 2718. I measure it at about 130,000 light-years across. A bit bigger than our galaxy. The southern member of UGC 04703 has a faint plume to the east. Including it but not the apparent bridge between the two galaxies it is 51,000 light-years across but omitting the plumes it is only 16,500 light-years in size. Its companion is only 10,500 light-years in size. The pair spans a distance of 110,000 light-years. Obviously one or both were larger than we seem them now with the stars of one or both strung between the two.

Considering the redshift of both the NGC and UGC galaxies is similar it could be they are related. I found nothing on this, however. NGC 2718 was discovered by William Herschel on March 24, 1786. It isn't in either of the two Herschel 400 programs.

The night I took this image wasn't all that great for transparency. There were clouds in the middle of the luminance exposures that cost me quite a few photons. The asteroid trail on the right edge almost vanishes in the middle due to these clouds. Several other asteroids, besides the two I've annotated are in the frame according to the Minor Planet Center. Most moving very slowly yet they can't be seen in my data at all. Given this, I was totally shocked to see the most distant object identifies by NED as a galaxy with a verified spectroscopic redshift that puts it almost 9 billion light-years distant. Many in the 4 to 6 billion light-year range are annotated. Since most are so faint you will likely have to enlarge the image just to find them I didn't annotate them all. Considering the clouds I'm amazed at how deep this image apparently goes. I did pick up one a bit further away but it's PSF and lack of a verified redshift indicate it could be just an unusually blue star or a quasar. In this case, it definitely is a galaxy.

Also, the image contains what NED labels as NGC 2718A at 17th magnitude so quite bright. It gives it an error circle with a radius of 10 seconds of arc. I've put the label where they say it is but there's nothing there or within 10" of arc of that position brighter than 23rd magnitude. I can't find any other reference to anything named NGC 2718A other than this NED entry.

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

Related Designations for NGC2718

NGC2742

I image rarely seen, usually peculiar galaxies. This one is rarely seen but the only thing peculiar about it is it is very normal with lots of detail yet I imaged it anyway. I did so as I'm working on all H400 galaxies I can from my latitude. Being a classic grand design spiral with a lot of detail I was more than a little surprised to find virtually no images of it on the net. Why such a nearly perfect spiral isn't all over the net surprised me. One paper says of it; "The spiral pattern in NGC 2742 is beautifully regular. It is multi-armed; five crossings of the major axis can be traced on one side and three or four on the other (depending on whether one counts satellite arm fragments as separate arms)." There is a diffuse radio emission to its north. Is it related? I found one paper saying maybe.

Redshift puts it about 65 million light-years from us. Non-redshift measurements put it about 73 million light-years from us. I suspect these are a bit more accurate than redshift as local motion can distort the distance of galaxies this close to us. Still, the difference isn't all that great. It carries two NGC numbers NGC 2742 and NGC 2816. The former is due to William Herschel finding it on March 19, 1790 Later his son John found it. Apparently, he used a different position. In any case, his finding was recorded by Dreyer as NGC 2816. John found it on March 30, 1832. Most refer to it by NGC 2742. It is in the original H400 program. My log entry from that dated April 14, 1985 with my 10" f/5 at 100x on a humid night cutting transparency reads: Small, featureless galaxy. An evenly bright oval only slightly brighter toward the center. Seems more lime 12.5 magnitude not 11 as listed." Sounds like the humidity was more of an issue than I thought. I measure its size as about 64,000 light-years. Rather typical for a spiral of this type.

There is a rather nearby companion, about 40' of an arc to the southeast, out of my frame, NGC 2768. It is about 67 to 68 million light-years away. This would put them less than a million light-years apart if at about the same distance from us. It too was found by William Herschel the same night as he found this galaxy. But being E6 or S0 depending on the source, it isn't nearly as interesting, to me anyway being nearly featureless. It too is in the original H400 program but I've not taken it so won't go into it further until I do.

Transparency wasn't a problem the night this image was taken. I've picked up galaxies past 6 billion light-years distance and 23rd magnitude. Seeing wasn't quite up to the transparency but still better than most nights the last few years. I hope this will continue.

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

Related Designations for NGC2742

NGC2744

NGC 2744 is the strange galaxy in the NGC 2749 galaxy group which is located in Cancer the crab. It certainly is a train wreck of a galaxy. It is often considered a double galaxy. The southern part is also known as LEDA 200248. Is it a separate galaxy or part of the mess that is NGC 2744? Seligman considers it the latter. It is obvious something collided with what was a normal spiral galaxy. Is the southern piece the offending galaxy. If not what happened to the colliding galaxy? I find no other candidates. The north going plume may be stars ripped from the colliding galaxy and the southern blob what is left of it -- or not. I find no studies of star rotation in the main galaxy. If it has digested the colliding galaxy it should show in a study of the motion of the disk stars. But I find this one has been mostly ignored since 1985 with most papers only discussing its visual appearance and debating if the southern part is a companion or not. Until more to the contrary, I vote that the southern blob is likely the remains of a colliding galaxy. I say this as to my eye the north plume passes behind the northern galaxy then reappears below it much brighter and joins the lower blob. If so that shows the lower blob to be the most likely source of the plume, probably showing its path to the train wreck. In any case, it will eventually become part of the galaxy which will likely retain its spiral nature. Like many of the NGC galaxies, it was discovered by William Herschel on March 21, 1784. It isn't in either of the H400 observing programs.

NGC 2747 is a spiral galaxy in the group. It too is about 200 million light-years distant. I find little on it. It was discovered by Albert Marth on March 29, 1865.

NGC 2749 anchors the group. It is listed as being an E2 or E3 galaxy depending on who you listen to. It is about the same distance as NGC 2744. Seen in or through it is an object NED calls a galaxy. It has the same redshift as NGC 2749. So is it really just part of NGC 2749, the tiny core of something it is digesting or possibly a huge globular cluster in it? Somehow Herschel missed this big and bright galaxy. It stayed unnoticed until Heinrich d'Arrest found it on March 5, 1862. How such a big and bright galaxy was overlooked for so long is unknown.

NGC 2752 is the last NGC galaxy in the group. But not a true member if its redshift is right. That puts it twice as distant as the other three NGC galaxies. It is listed as a barred spiral but is seen so edge on details are hard to see. Seen face on I suspect it would be a very good galaxy. Like NGC 2749 it was somehow overlooked by Herschel but also by d'Arrest. It wasn't until March 28, 1864 Albert Marth found it, one day before seeing NGC 2747.

Two other NGC galaxies are just out of my field of view to the south. I was planning on just taking NGC 2744 but the framing shot turned up NGC 2749 and 2752 near the edge of my frame. To better show them I moved the scope west and only slightly south not realizing the other two were just out of the frame.

I've prepared an annotated image showing all that NED has redshift values for.

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

Related Designations for NGC2744

NGC2748

NGC 2748 is a polar ring spiral galaxy located in Camelopardalis just west of Draco's tail. It is a medium size spiral about 66,000 light-years across assuming its redshift look back time of 69 million years is correct. That agrees very closely to the median value of Tully-Fisher measurements which give 68.5 million light-years for its distance. The polar ring is inferred from the two broad star sprays seen at right angles to the plane of the galaxy's disk. It was discovered by John Herschel on September 2, 1828.

The galaxy is located near the pole and thus in the IFN nebula that fills this area of the sky. My exposure time of only 40 minutes didn't begin to pick up its full extent but does show the brighter patches throughout the image frame especially to the north.

This high declination is little studied except by the 2MASS which doesn't pick up much more than a galaxies position. Thus no other galaxy in the image had any useful data at NED. No annotated image was prepared because of this lack of data.

At least conditions were stable enough I was able to collect one round of data. Due to the IFN, I'd planned on several more but sky conditions conspired to prevent that. I'm lucky to have gotten this much.

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

Related Designations for NGC2748

NGC2750

NGC 2750 is a triangular shaped galaxy about 135 million light-years distant (125 million by a single Tully-Fisher measurement) in northwestern Cancer. It's odd shape and two heavy arms have resulted in it being listed as two or three different galaxies. The bright arm on the west is LEDA 093099 with a distance of 135 million light-years; the two vertical knots in it listed as ASK 523821.0 at 132 million light-years and the long mostly straight arm to the north listed as LEDA 4087828 at 138 million light-years. Since this is a mostly face on spiral it is a bit difficult to explain the three different redshift determinations. If it were tilted it could be due to rotation but this must be due to different error bars in the measurements. For its odd shape, it is simply classed as Sc by all that I checked. It was discovered by William Herschel on March 11, 1785 but rather faint and not in either Herschel 400 observing programs.

The field is full of strangeness. To the north is SDSSCGB 00484 a group of 4 dwarf galaxies sharing the same halo. I found only one distance measurement for this but the error bar on its position was 45" of arc and pointed to empty space just west of the group. Thus I put a question mark by that distance. There's nothing else in the area of the error circle so I think I'm right in doing this.

To the west is UGC 4794. It is a strange looking galaxy that is classified as S? with a spectrum dominated by Wolf Rayet stars and HII emission. Its disk is very faint but it has a strong arm that takes a sudden dogleg west and a core region with three bright areas rather than the normal one. Is it the result of a merger? I found nothing on it to help with its odd shape.

High to the northeast of NGC 2750 is UGC 4774. It is only slightly more distant. It is listed as SBdm. The odd thing about it is the row of bright blue clusters in a line near its northern edge. Linear features like this and the northern arm of NGC 2750 are rare in galaxies and difficult to explain. Again I found nothing to help.

Southeast of NGC 2750 is a double galaxy or two in the same line of sight. Only the fainter northern galaxy had redshift data. It is apparently a dwarf companion to NGC 2750. Its possible companion had no redshift shown so I can't say if this is a true pair or not. They certainly overlap. Not far southwest of these to is another pair. The northern one is starlike and almost lost in the haze of its larger southern companion. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a redshift for either so that is why the question mark. West and a bit south of NGC 2750 brings us to another pair of galaxies, red ones this time, ASK 523824.0 and KIG 0293:[VOV2007]070. The former has a redshift putting it nearly a billion light-years away but the latter had none so I don't know if these two are really related or not. Again that results in a question mark.

The image contains a few quasars including one to the east that is listed as both a galaxy and quasar. Its PSF is that of a galaxy rather than quasar in my image so I listed it first as a galaxy. At only 3 billion light-years seeing a galaxy as fuzzy isn't at all unexpected though usually a quasar so outshines its galaxy the fuzz is lost in the glare.

Transparency was unusually good for this image. About what I was used to before all the gunk of the last two years moved in. Thus I was able to easily pick up galaxies down well past 22nd magnitude. The faintest with redshift listed is just below NGC 2750 at magnitude 22.3. Others I didn't label went past magnitude 23. This also allowed me to again pick up asteroids near 21st magnitude. The image has two of brighter than 18th magnitude and to of 20.8 magnitude. All 7 are detailed in the annotated image.

There's a surprising amount going on in this frame once you start looking more closely at it.

For some reason, I ended up taking an extra blue frame. I left no note. I do that when I suspect something ruined one of the first two frames but in this case, all were equal so I used all three.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RG=2x10' B=3x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2750

NGC2775

NGC 2775 is a flocculent galaxy in southeastern Cancer. Redshift puts it about 76 million light-years distant by redshift and 55 million light-years by a Tully estimate. NED classes it as SA(r)ab AGN? The NGC Project says simply Sa. Other papers have yet other opinions including Sa(r), S0/a. It is a strange galaxy in that the core region is nearly featureless with a star-like point at the core. After a rather evenly bright, featureless disk there's a dust ring followed by flocculent arms. Then another dust ring separates these rings from a featureless outer band that fades away. Longer exposure time would likely trace this area out further but add no detail. The contrast of the galaxy seems very low as if viewed through a mist. Could this be due to a huge spherical halo of stars around it? Seems quite possible but I found nothing much about this in the literature I read. If its distance is about 76 million light-years it is some 110,000 light-years across, a large spiral.

It was discovered by William Herschel on December 19, 1783. It is in the original H400 program. My log from April 14, 1985 with my 10" f/5 on a humid night at up to 100x reads; "large, round galaxy, gradually brighter toward the starlike nucleus." I suspect the humidity prevented me from seeing its full extent.

An odd red object is seen in the middle of the flocculent rings to the southwest. It is listed by the Sloan survey as SDSS J091019.53+070141.2 and at a redshift distance of 82 million light-years. NED lists it as a separate galaxy rather than part of NGC 2775 but gives it a maximum size of 0.04 minutes. This translates to a galaxy of only about 950 light years in size! A dwarf galaxy indeed. The red color in the blue of the flocculent arms certainly would indicate it could be a background (or foreground) dwarf galaxy of old stars. Unusual to see a red dwarf, however. Could the red be due to seeing it through a lot of dust in NGC 2775? Nope turns out there is a much simpler solution. I found this HST image of the galaxy:
http://cseligman.com/text/atlas/ngc2775hst.jpg It is oriented the same as mine. Note it is just a foreground star. Apparently, the redshift comes from NGC 2775's spiral arm, not the object/star. Sometimes the pros get it wrong it would appear.

NGC 2775 has a small companion, NGC 2777 to the northeast. It has a similar redshift to NGC 2775 so likely a true companion. NED classes it as Sab? NGC project says Sb-. Seeing was poor for this image making NGC 2777 look rather odd. Better images show its arms are made of mostly very large star knots. It's these knots that give it the very odd appearance in my low-resolution image. I need to revisit this one under better seeing conditions than the near 4" of this one. Then it would look more like a spiral. If the distance is 83 million light-years it is a dwarf spiral only 15,000 light-years in diameter.

Also in my image is NGC 2773. It has a redshift putting it three times more distant than the other two so it is not related. The distance also makes it hard to see any detail. Both NED and the NGC project class it as S?

North of NGC 2775 is the odd galaxy LEDA 213577. NED has the essential note about it saying: "May be an interacting pair." That certainly appears reasonable. The two parts of this object are very different shades of blue. It has the same redshift as nearby NGC 2777 but even smaller. If two galaxies they are really dwarfs. End to end the object is only 11,000 light-years long at 84 million light-years with the bright blue object being less than 5000 light-years across. These sizes would argue against this being two interacting galaxies. A small dwarf with a large bright star knot at one end may be a more likely explanation. I'd sure like to see a high-resolution image of this one.

There are two objects IXO 32 and IXO 33 that NED shows as a quasar, Xray Source and an AGN. One, south of NGC 2775 has a distance of only 3 billion light-years and is not star-like but shows a disk like other galaxies at this distance. On the other had the other, north of NGC 2775, is over 11 billion light-years distant and is star-like. It is also blue which is rather expected of such objects rather than the slightly red color of the close one that matches typical galaxies at this distance. I can't explain why this difference.

Near the bottom of the image is a very odd looking galaxy at 1.63 billion light-years, 2MASX J09104935+0653231. I put the label well to the right as there's faint fuzz between the label and the core of the galaxy and more fuzz doing up and a bit left of the core. This north piece is far brighter than the one going west. NED gives no clue as to what is going on here. The north going fuzz looks a lot like a faint disk galaxy seen somewhat edge on that has no core as it is rather oval in shape. The west one appears more round. Are these three objects, the result of two interacting galaxies or something else? I haven't a clue but it sure is strange. It appears to be part of a group of galaxies that fall into the 1.63 to 1.66 billion light-year distance range. Though I didn't see any listed at NED. Also, there are quite a few galaxies at about 1.8 to 1.85 million light-years in the image. They would appear to be part of some galaxy group but I didn't find one listed in NED either.

While NED has distance estimates for dozens of galaxies too faint to get through my poor seeing and transparency this night there are galaxies in the image NED doesn't even list. Three of them form an interesting knot inside the north edge of NGC 2775. Are they three interacting galaxies? Not only doesn't NED have any redshift data on any of them, it doesn't list anything at their position though far fainter galaxies (too faint for my image) are listed. I've noted them with a question mark.

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

Related Designations for NGC2775

NGC2776

NGC 2776 is a nice somewhat ragged face on spiral galaxy in Lynx under the front legs of Ursa Major. Redshift puts it at a distance of 130 million light-years while other measurements say it is closer at 91 million light-years. It has a large faint region to the north and another to the south. Including these, I get a size of 141,000 light-years assuming the larger distance and 98,000 if the shorter distance is used. NED classifies it as SAB(rs)c. Are its drawn out, faint arms due to interaction with some other galaxy? I can't find any likely candidate unless it has merged with NGC 2776. Seems possible to me though I didn't find anything in the literature to support this.

The field contains many galaxies, some seen right through the edges of NGC 2776. None seen through the galaxy had redshift data. In fact, most galaxies in the image had no redshift. Those who did are in the annotated image. A couple edge on distant galaxies I wanted to know about didn't have much info but I labeled them anyway.

It was discovered on March 19, 1828 by John Herschel, one his dad missed it seems.

In the annotated image CQ stands for candidate quasar. The one above NGC 2776 only has photometric redshift data. This can often just be a star in our galaxy but NED seems to give this one more validity than most so I included it. Normally I omit these. A "p" after the distance indicates it is known to be photometric. An "s" shows NED has verified it is spectroscopic. Those with neither label are unknown. But if the redshift is longer than 4 significant digits it is likely spectroscopic. For more distant galaxies and quasars, I also provide the redshift value as it is a better way to judge distance than a simple redshift look back time distance. The time light travels to reach us gets rather misleading at larger distances since the object was much closer when the light left and much more distant "now" than the redshift look back time. For instance, the galaxy at the top of the image a bit right of NGC 2776 has a look back time distance of 6 billion light-years. But the light left it when it was only 4.66 billion light-years away. Thanks to the expansion of the universe it needed another 1.34 billion years to reach us. Currently, it is 7.66 billion light-years distant but we are seeing it as if it was only 4.66 billion light-years distant not the 6 billion you might expect. As the z value grows so does the differences in these distance estimates. Take the quasar the lower right at a z of 1.304733. It's look back distance is 8.85 billion light-years but the distance when the light left it was 5.72 billion light-years and its "current" distance is 13.18 billion light-years, almost the edge of the universe. By a z of 1.4 it would be further than the age of the universe. The z value allows you to determine these distances using your own values for the universe's constants such as Hubble's constant OmegaM and Omegavac. I used Ho of 70.5, OmegaM of 0.27 and Omegavac of 0.73. You can use more modern values either based on HST images or the cosmologic microwave http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.htmlbackground. These give somewhat different values. See http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.html for one such calculator.

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

Related Designations for NGC2776

NGC2787

NGC 2787 is a barred spiral in Ursa Major. Redshift puts it about 36 million light-years away though this has a large error bar. NED lists two other distance measurements of 42 million light-years by Tully measurement and 24 million light-years by resolution of Surface Brightness Fluctuations. The HST has taken a great image of the core of this galaxy and uses the 24 million light-year distance. I don't know if this is yet another measurement or they are using the SBF measurement.

The NGC Project classes it as SB(0) while NED says SB(r)0+ LINER. So it has an active core. The HST image shows a lot of fine dust rings around the south side of the core. I didn't resolve the dust rings but do see a hint of their color along the south side of the core. I have no idea if this is due to those bands or just coincidental noise due to my short integration time. The location is correct at least. I see only a hint of the bar other than the bright regions where it joins the ring structure. Its red color indicates star formation has been very low for a very long time so all the blue stars have long since burned out or are hidden behind thick dust.

For more on this one see the HST image and info at http://heritage.stsci.edu/2002/07/index.html . The HST image covers a square of 37 pixels around the core in my image.

NGC 2787 was discovered by William Herschel on December 3, 1788. It is in the original H400 program. My entry from April 27, 1984 with 12.5" f/5 at up to 150x under excellent conditions reads; "Bright starlike nucleus, rapidly dims to a faint glow surrounding it. Appears more circular than Burnham's 2.1'x1.3' dimensions would indicate."

The galaxy to the upper left is UGC 04944. NED has no redshift distance for it so I don't know if it is related to NGC 2787 but rather doubt it is. It is a Scd: spiral seen nearly edge on.

The entire image is bathed in faint galactic cirrus which came as a surprise to me when processing the image. After seeing it on the first night's images I went back the second night to help bring it out. Unfortunately, airglow was much higher so it was not nearly as strong but seeing was better. I combined all 8 frames which helped resolution but hurt the cirrus. I need to retry this on a good night with low airglow. Rarely happens here of late, however.

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

Related Designations for NGC2787

NGC2793

NGC 2793 is another galaxy I'm surprised Arp didn't find a place for in his Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. It certainly is peculiar and quite similar to Arp 6/NGC 2537, the Bear Paw Galaxy, but with "wind effects". He has a category for interacting galaxies he calls "Wind Effects". NGC 2793 certainly appears to have a strong east wind blowing across it creating wispy blue streaks across it. It also is a ring galaxy which he included but again these were interacting galaxies. In fact, ring galaxies like 2793 are usually thought to be the result of a near direct hit on the core of a spiral by a dense "bullet" galaxy. Yet there's no candidate for a "bullet" in this case. I found only a couple papers discussing this. They mention LEDA 082356 as a possible "bullet" saying its redshift is unknown. Turns out it is now known and at nearly 4 times the distance can't be the cause. Neither paper considers the bright core might hide a dense superimposed bullet nor has their apparently been any follow-up studies of this galaxy. I find the rectangular core shape another oddity. Usually, the pushed to the ring the core takes on an arc that matches the ring's arc. It may be this galaxy just naturally looks this way but I find that hard to believe. The ring of star clusters along the edge is hard to explain without some outside force being involved. It was discovered by John Herschel on March 6, 1828.

The long diameter of NGC 2793 measures about 29,000 light-years assuming the 89 million light-year distance. It is located in southeastern Lynx on the northwestern edge of the Abell 779 galaxy cluster. It isn't related to that cluster which is about 320 million light-years distant. It is likely the distant "companion" is an outlying member of the cluster.

The annotated image notes all galaxies in the field for which NED had redshift data. If the galaxy had a name listed in NED other than just one that was its coordinates it is noted. Otherwise, a G denotes a galaxy and Q a quasar. One stellar object was listed as a candidate BLAGN (Broad Line Active Galactic Nucleus) which is likely an underfed quasar or one hidden behind the galaxy's stars and dust. As light travel time distances are rather questionable at such high redshifts the redshift z value is also given for distant quasars when Z is greater than 1.

One asteroid was sneaking out of the frame in the lower right corner when I started the luminance data and is noted in the annotated image. One red frame was totally lost to clouds and the remaining frame very noisy so red data is questionable. I didn't realize this until I went to process it months later and too late to reshoot.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10, R (poor)=1x10' GB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2793

NGC2805

HOLM 124 is a group of 4 galaxies in eastern Ursa Major, southeast of M81 and M82. At one time it was considered part of the M81 group but then redshift and other distance determinations showed it much more distant at say 84 to 100 million light-years. The main galaxy in the group is NGC 2805. It shows a lot of distortion from its interaction with the others three millions of years ago. Its arms are quite angular except in the core region. Most edges are linear rather than curved and it has some rather odd arms such as the spur to the west coming from its northern end. Other arms show lots of star-forming regions that NED shows as other galaxies except for one labeled Part of Galaxy (PoG). I've shown them in the annotated image but since their redshift matches that of the galaxy they are unlikely separate galaxies. The galaxy is quite blue, likely due to all the star formation going on in it.

The other three members of the HOLM 124 group are to the upper left; NGC 2814, NGC 2820 and the really disrupted NGC 2820A/IC 2458. NGC 2814 is made up of several bright blobs. The only reddish one is well above center near a foreground star. The central blob is quite blue but does appear to have a short edge-on linear dust trail through it but it doesn't continue into the other blobs. I sure would like to know what it looks like more face on. NED classifies it simply as Sb: agreeing it is an edge on spiral.

NGC 2820 is also an edge on spiral with an odd extension from the west end. NED classifies it as SB(s)c pec sp. It too has a star cloud that NED shows as a separate galaxy though it looks to my eye to be a bright star cloud in the galaxy. Being blue I don't see it as the core of some galaxy being eaten by the much larger 2820. NGC 2820A seems to be the most torn up of the four. Being small that isn't all that surprising. NED uses the brightest of the star clouds at its north end for its position rather than an average of all its parts. The north end appears to be made of a close bunch of star-forming clouds while the southern region looks almost like a separate galaxy with a blue core and star disk around it though the "core" is oblong and likely another star-forming region as it is blue. NED classifies it as I0 pec:.

NGC 2805 was discovered by William Herschel on April 2, 1791. It is in the second Herschel 400 observing program. NGC 2814 and 2820 were also discovered by William Herschel but on the following night, April 3, 1791. Or was it the same night, just after midnight? I find this a bit ambiguous. These two aren't in either Herschel 400 program. NGC 2820/IC 2458 was discovered by Guillaume Bigourdan over 100 years later on March 14, 1899.

The annotated image shows the more distant galaxies that NED shows a redshift for. This is a retake of a much earlier image, 2007, that was taken on an even better night but back then my collimation was off so stars are a bit screwy. Color data was severely damaged due to a light leak I didn't know was there. This created a gradient in the luminance channel and a red gradient in the red frames. Back then I didn't have either the knowledge or tools to deal with it. Due to these issues, I did a complete retake on March 22, 2017 UT. The first clear night with good seeing in months.

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

Related Designations for NGC2805