NGC3332

NGC 3332/NGC 3342 is a shell galaxy in Leo 2.6° south of M95. Redshift puts it about 28 million light-years from us. The median of 11 measurements of a type 1A supernova SN 2005ki put it about 27 million light-years away. Surprisingly good agreement. It was discovered twice by William Herschel. Once on January 18, 1784 as NGC 3342 and again on March 4, 1796, as NGC 3332. Actually, he used his own notation that was converted to NGC numbers for the catalog based on his listed Right Ascension. His position for NGC 3332 was incorrect so wasn't recognized as a duplicate. Herschel's notes for what is now his NGC 3342 position reads: "The faintest and smallest nebula imaginable. I viewed it a long while and with a higher power than the sweeper. Having no person at the clock, I went in to write down the time and found it impossible to recover the nebula. It appeared like a vS nebulous star, and is probably of the cometic sort; there was another vS star south-following (I think, or rather, am pretty sure), and it preceded a pB * [the nebula is south-preceding of a star by a diagram, about 6 arcmin][JLED]. It should have been secured before I went into the light. Its place must be about 2 1/2 deg following rho Leonis and about 10 arcmin more north than that star."

While the galaxy is of low surface brightness it isn't as faint as Herschel's note would indicate. Conditions must have been rather poor that night or else he was looking at something else but the stars he mentions are correct for this galaxy.

The galaxy is a lonely shell galaxy. The shell, while faint is quite red indicating it is old since all the young and middle age stars are mostly gone. Shells of galaxies in clusters where most reside, since they are the result of a merger with another galaxy, quickly vanish either absorbed back into the galaxy or scattered further afield by interaction with others in the cluster. In this case, being a lone galaxy the shell has been able to survive for several billion years.

It isn't quite alone as two dwarf galaxies that have a somewhat similar redshift are in my field, AGC 202230.0 and ASK 279557.0. Two galaxies are seen through NGC 3332/42. The most obvious isn't even listed in NED which surprised me. The other is there but with no redshift data. All with redshift data are noted in the annotated image.

In early April I started having trouble with my filter wheel. When first fired up it wouldn't rotate. Sometimes powering the camera off and on fixed the issue. Other times I'd have to go out, open the camera and replace the band the friction drive pushes against as it had come off. After 10 years of hard use it was stretched enough it wasn't holding on. At least I thought the trouble started in April. Turns out this February 25 image was the first sign of trouble and I didn't catch it. I went to process the image and found one third of it was through the luminance filter but then there was a dark band then the far eastern edge was taken through the H alpha filter so had little to no signal. When it rotated to the other filters the problem corrected itself and after that all was fine but I was short most of the luminance data for the eastern side. This is where taking the color data at the same binning as the luminance paid off. I used it to fill in for the missing luminance by creating a pseudo luminance from the color data and then blending it in using the lighten mode. I had to work the background heavily to hide the lower SN ratio of that part of the image but otherwise, I salvaged the image without cropping it severely leaving the galaxy on the edge of the cropped frame. The issue was due to the friction band being over 10 years old and had lost its stretch so barely held on to the groove it rides in. I fought the issue for some time before finally realizing the cause. I ordered a new band from SBIG and they were to send it out. But everyone left for NEAF and that didn't happen. The order reached shipping but had gotten no further until I was getting desperate after the band finally broke. I found the rubber bands the mailman used to bind my mail worked but had to be replaced every couple days or it too broke. After my second request, the new bands (they sent me two in one package) arrived and at no cost. After finding this image compromised I checked all those between this one and early April when the issue next appeared that I caught. Fortunately, I found no problem. So I think this is the only one with the issue but with some 25 objects between then and the band's replacement, there might be one I failed to notice. I sure hope not. I don't need any more processing nightmares like this one created.

I was surprised that I was able to pull out a bit more of the shell than I saw in any other image Google turned up for this galaxy. There weren't many which also surprised me as it does have a nice shell though it needs a lot more time than I gave it to really bring out. My sky was exceedingly bright (for me) with airglow the night I took this image so it doesn't go as deep as normal.

If using The Sky 6 to find this galaxy use NGC 3342 as NGC 3332 pointed me to the wrong position. Nothing was at the position in fact.

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

Related Designations for NGC3332

NGC3338

NGC 3338 is a very large spiral under the belly of Leo the Lion about 76 million light-years distant by redshift. It is classed as SA(s)c. Besides the simple arm structure, there are faint hints of pieces of the galaxy extending well to the east and a bit to the west of the arms. The west side is harmed by the 9th magnitude star SAO 99253 so the full extent on that side is hard to determine. Using what I can see the galaxy is about 160,000 light-years across at its redshift distance. That's one big spiral. It was discovered on March 19, 1784 by William Herschel. Besides being rather odd it also made my to-do list being a member of the second Herschel 400 list.

Its structure is rather odd. The core is quite small and bright. It is surrounded by a nearly featureless disk with a dark dust ring circling the disk. The spiral arms come from beyond this dark ring. While parts of the arms are fine and well defined other areas are quite flocculent in nature. It is if it can't make up its mind if it wants to be a grand design spiral or a flocculent spiral. This dual personality plus the faint scattered "debris" may be indicative of a merger in the not so distant past.

It has two dwarf companions, AGC 203080 to the northwest and AGC 205268 to the east. They are of about the same redshift. Using their redshift value they are 6,000 and 8,000 light years in size respectively. I doubt that devouring something of their size could create the disruption seen in NGC 3338.

Conditions were very poor for this one. I didn't realize it or I'd have retaken the data. Seeing was fair but transparency went downhill from the start. Note how the asteroid trails fade away. showing the deterioration of conditions. For this one, I took the luminance on one side of the meridian and color on the other. The color data was very weak and failed to pick up the fainter parts of NGC 3338's outer arms so they are white. The galaxy, while not really a low surface brightness galaxy is noisy as if it were due to lack of data even after an extra luminance frame. With better data, I could have pulled a lot more detail out of this galaxy but it was just too noisy to attempt that.

While there are two galaxy clusters in the image only the bright cluster galaxy seems to show due to the poor conditions. Also, I should have moved the scope a bit south to pick up a neat flat galaxy that is mostly off the frame. What little shows appear rather warped. I'll try and do that when or if I retake the data.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=5x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC3338

NGC3344

NGC 3344 is a much neglected nearby classic face on barred spiral in Leo Minor. At a distance of only 25 million light-years according to the HST website, it is surprisingly poorly known. It was on my list as being a Herschel 400 object. I've been slowly picking these up as time permits. This one happens to be very photogenic but much overlooked. The NGC Project classifies it as Sc ignoring the bar. NED gives the more generally accepted classification of (R)SAB(r)bc. While redshift puts it some 41 million light-years away other measurements put it much closer. The HST, using both a type one supernova and some easily resolved Cepheid variable stars puts it at a more reasonable 25 million light-years which also matches the resolution the HST gives on the galaxy. See: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1242a/ for the full story and images.

My entry in the Herschel 400 log from April 15, 1985 (must have been celebrating the end of tax season at the telescope) reads: "Large, very faint, circular galaxy with a 13th magnitude starlike nucleus. Hard to see as it overlaps one member of a double star. Very confusing at lower power." The two stars against the disk are listed at 11.4 and 10.0. Apparently, I was seeing only the inner part of the disk with the brighter star beyond the disk I was seeing. Though I'd have thought I'd have said triple star rather than double. Apparently, I wasn't seeing the fainter, third member? At 13.5 magnitude I'd have expected it to be visible but faint. I need to look at it again this spring it would appear.

While seeing was rather average, transparency was below average. I should have used more than my good skies 4 luminance frames to pick out the faint outer arms. I had to stretch further than I like to bring them out raising the noise in the background more than I'd like. Longer times or a better night would bring out a lot I missed.

The annotated image points out two star clusters NED had listed as blue objects in the galaxy. The HST image doesn't extend out far enough to pick them up, unfortunately. The galaxy has a lot of very tiny HII regions but my seeing wasn't good enough to pick them up.

The annotated image shows a large number of galaxies in the field to be at a distance of 720 and 740 million light-years. I found one galaxy group at NED that contained only 4 galaxies at the 720 million light-year distance. Which four I don't know and why the rest are ignored I don't know. There are several galaxy pairs in the image but only one of the pair, if any, would have a redshift measurement so hard to know if they are really close pairs or just line of sight galaxies. Again I'm left with more questions than I started with.

The one asteroid in the image is also noted on the annotated image.

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

Related Designations for NGC3344

NGC3346

NGC 3346 is a face on barred spiral in Leo north of M105. Both redshift and Tully Fisher measurements put its distance at 73 million light-years. NED classifies it as SB(rs)cd while the NGC project says SBc. In any case, it has a nice mix of spiral arms and spurs. It is quite blue indicating recent star formation. Even the core is bluer than I expected. With all the blue star clouds I expected to find some HII regions but there's only a hint of a couple in my image. A note at NED indicates the authors of the paper failed to resolve the expected HII regions as well so I can't feel too bad about missing them.

The image contains many galaxy clusters listed at NED. Most have a Bright Cluster Galaxy that I used for the center if it was within 1" of arc of the center position. In most cases, both the cluster and the Bright Cluster Galaxy had the same photographically determined redshift. In those cases, I listed only one distance with a "p" to indicate the photographic nature of the distance estimate. If they were different then the second distance is that of the galaxy. If no "p" then it was spectroscopically determined and likely the better value. In a few cases, the distances to a cluster were listed by NED as "Estimated". Those are indicated with an "e". How they were estimated wasn't given.

Many of the clusters seem themselves clustered. Often they have similar galaxy counts. Usually, they came from different catalogs. I have to wonder if these clusters of clusters are really looking at the same galaxies but have determined the centers and sizes of the groups (none gave a radius or diameter) differently but are really referring to some of the same galaxies. If the line drawn doesn't end in a galaxy then there was no bright cluster galaxy listed and the line points to the position given for the center. In such cases the error bars were often 15 to 30 seconds of arc so included many possible galaxies for the center one. Some clusters have no core galaxy making such a hunt futile.

The image contains 3 asteroids. I've noted them in the annotated image. A few edge on galaxies are seen in the image that are good asteroid imposters. I check each out and they all were real galaxies.

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

Related Designations for NGC3346

NGC3356

This galaxy field is located in Leo just north of Sextans border. My main target was NGC 3356 a somewhat distorted spiral galaxy. The nucleus seems south of its center and there's a drawn out arm or plume on the east side. It is just north of a much smaller galaxy. Both are about 300 million light-years distant by redshift. I doubt that little galaxy could have distorted much larger NGC 3356 so what did? NED shows another even smaller galaxy against NGC 2256. Is it really a separate blue galaxy or just a bright star cloud in NGC 3356?

It isn't so much that the southern galaxy is so small but that NGC 3356 is so big. I measure its size at almost 180,000 light-years including the plume or drawn out arm. The southern galaxy is a respectable 23,000 light-years in size.

To the west of NGC 3356 is a quartet of galaxies. At least three of them are likely interacting. The only one to make the NGC list is NGC 3349. It is listed as a WR galaxy. That means its spectrum is dominated by Wolf-Reyet stars. They are massive dying stars. For them to dominate a galaxies spectrum a very large number of massive stars had to have been created at about the same time. They lived their short lives and are now nearing the end of their lives. This likely means the galaxy was a starburst galaxy in the recent past but most of the star-forming activity is now over. Was this starburst triggered by interaction with one or more of the other galaxies? The companion, NSA 137928 has a large faint plume to the north. While the galaxy is mostly red the plume is somewhat blue. Catalogs show it as brighter than NGC 3349 but with more area, it appears fainter. To its south is SDSS J104352.20+064516.2, a very disrupted blue galaxy with a faint core. Its southwestern edge is sharp but the rest is very diffuse. The only distance estimate for it is by the Friend of a Friend method. That just means it appears to be at the same distance as NSA 137928. That appears likely due to the apparent interaction between the two. Did they also interact with NGC 3349 as its WR status might indicate?

The fourth galaxy has no redshift data or any other distance estimate. It probably is a distant galaxy just in the same line of sight but maybe not. I consider it unlikely but possible it is related to the others.

In the lower left part of the image is NGC 3362, a very photogenic SABc galaxy with a Seyfert 2 nucleus. Its redshift puts it only slightly closer than the trio of galaxies including NGC 3349. It would be a great sight if not for its great distance. It too is a very large galaxy. I measure its size as slightly over 145,000 light-years.

NGC 3349 comes in at a more typical 65,000 light-years in size. Its distorted companion is more difficult to measure due to overlap with the southern blue galaxy. I measure its yellow core at only 34,000 light-years but include the plume and it is a huge 160,000 light-years across. The way the blue galaxy fades away makes measuring it difficult. I got very different answers each time. I'll say 41,000 light-years but that's very approximate and assumes it is at the same distance as the other two.

NGC 3349 and NGC 3362 were discovered Albert Marth on March 22, 1865. NGC 3359 was discovered by William Herschel on April 17, 1784. It isn't in either of the H400 observing programs. I can't find I ever looked for it with my 10" scope.

To the lower left of NGC 3362 as a 12th magnitude star with something hiding behind its eastern edge. It appears to be a rather bright galaxy. But neither NED nor SIMBAD have anything there. Looking at the Sloan image there is a large oval yellow object there that appears to be possibly two objects that overlap. But the glare from the star may be a problem. What it is will remain a mystery unless someone finds a better image of the object. Not easy thanks to the foreground star. Another puzzle is ASK 231737.0. It is a third of the way between NGC 3362 and NGC 3356. It looks like a typical galaxy at its distance of 2.54 billion light-years but many catalogs say it is a quasar. Usually, the quasar drowns out the galaxy leaving only a bit of fuzz around the burned out core. Here I see no sign of a usually bright core. Just to its left is another galaxy trying to hide behind a much dimmer star. It didn't escape as did the other hiding object.

Otherwise, the annotated image has the usual assortment of objects including 3 rather dim asteroids.

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

Related Designations for NGC3356

NGC3359

NGC 3359 is a nice barred spiral in Ursa Major about 50 light-years distant (redshift says 53, the Gemini page says 49 and other sources say about the same range). NED classes it as SB(rs)c, while the NGC project says SBc. Both mention it has strong HII emission. So why am I imaging a rather normal galaxy? It isn't as "normal" as it appears. For one it has over 100 large star forming regions, far more than most spiral galaxies and for another, the bar is thought to be only 400 to 500 million years old while the galaxy is likely at least 10 billion years or older. What triggers bar formation is a rather long-standing problem. Once formed do they last or are they temporary? These are still highly debatable subjects. At that distance, I didn't really expect to pick up many of its HII regions as most amateur images fail to pick them up unless blending in H alpha light. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the bigger ones did come through. Though to appreciate the vast number present in this galaxy see the Gemini North image at: http://www.gemini.edu/gallery/v/astronomical_images_and_illustrations/Galaxies/ngc3359v2.jpg.html

Their image is flipped to a mirror image with south (sort of) up and west to the right while my image has north up and west to the right. Theirs is a mirror image that wasn't corrected for display. You can read all about the galaxy at the Gemini link. Another unanswered question not mentioned at the Gemini link is why all the sudden star formation in every corner of the galaxy? There are no nearby galaxies to have triggered it. Nor does it look particularly disturbed yet the bar and likely the HII regions are very young compared to the age of the galaxy.

NGC 3359 was discovered by William Herschel on November 28, 1793. It is in the second H400 program.

There is a smudge of a blue galaxy to the east-northeast of NGC 3359. Could it be involved in some way? It could if it was at the same distance though its mass is too small to cause much interaction unless it has already been stripped of its dust and gas in a close passage a billion years or so ago. It is SDSS J104713.26+631629.2 but NED has no redshift data so it could be too close or too distant to be involved. For now, it is an unknown. Though I see no hint of any tidal connection.

I've noted a galaxy in the upper left corner. NED shows it at 2.7 billion light-years yet it shows some rather obvious spiral structure. NED lists it at 12.6" of arc in size. That would work out to be 165,000 light years in diameter. A pretty big spiral.

The galaxy cluster west and a bit north of NGC 3359 is GMBCG J161.33127+63.27897 it and its anchor galaxy is listed at 4.2 billion light-years measured photographically. It is said to have 8 members but the size, as usual, is not given. Still, there are 4 other fuzzies in the immediate area and a few more a bit further out that are likely its members. Just southwest of it is another cluster, WHL J104515.8+631614, which is listed at 15 members. I see only the anchor galaxy which is listed at magnitude 23.1. Again no size is given. Looks like 23.1 is about the limit in this image.

Continuing with galaxy clusters, WHL J104452.7+631740 is near the right edge. It is listed as having 7 members. No distance is listed for the anchor galaxy which has the same coordinates as the cluster. GMBCG J161.17919+63.24738 is yet another cluster near the west (right) edge of the image. Only the cluster has redshift data but its coordinates match that of the anchoring galaxy. The cluster is said to have 12 members and be 4.4 billion light-years distant. No diameter was given for the cluster. GMBCG J161.15360+63.38777 is in the upper right corner. Its anchor galaxy is very red. While the distances to it and the cluster are slightly different they both round to 4.0 billion light-years. The cluster is listed as having 10 members in an unknown area. Even closer to the top in the right corner is WHL J104444.9+632500. The photographic distance estimate is 4.7 billion light-years with 8 members. The spectroscopic redshift of the BCG, however, shows a distance of 4.4 billion light-years. I assume that is more accurate for the cluster as well as the galaxy. Oddly the galaxy isn't as red as the closer galaxy anchoring the other cluster in that corner.

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

Related Designations for NGC3359

NGC3367

NGC 3367 is a rather messed up barred spiral in Leo north of M105 about 150 million light-years away. To show so much detail at that distance you know it is large, about 115,000 light-years across by my measurements including the faint outer plume on the western side. I say "messed up" due to its rather chaotic spiral structure. At first glance, it looks rather normal but then you find arms start from nothing or branch from others. One ends when it hits a bright edge that appears to be a spiral arm that comes from nowhere. It has one heavy arm on the south side that certainly fits Arp's "One heavy arm" category though didn't make his list. It was discovered by William Herschel on March 19, 1784. It's not in either H400 program.

As I was about to start the image I noted there was a rather large NGC galaxy in The Sky just outside the field of view. I decided to include it so moved NGC 3367 down and west just enough to bring NGC 3377 into the image. Good thing as it turned out quite interesting though wasn't on my to-do list.

It is a large "discy" elliptical galaxy much closer than NGC 3367. Redshift puts it at 47 million light-years but a bunch of non-redshift measurements have a median value of 35 million light-years. Considering how many globular clusters I was able to find in it I'll go with that closer figure. By "discy" I mean it appears to have a disc-like structure inside the elliptical structure. One note at NED agrees and another says there's no hint of a disc. I pointed out some of the globular clusters close to the galaxy though NED listed a lot more further out and seen against the galaxy. Some of the latter weren't even visible in the Sloan image. NED also listed a hundred or more planetary nebulae. After finding some in M31 I looked for them in my image. After not finding them I checked the SLOAN image and couldn't identify any their either. I only tested a half dozen out of more than 100 so a few might be faintly seen. Figuring if SLOAN can't see the ones I checked there was little likelihood I would. This galaxy was discovered by William Herschel on April 8, 1784. It is in the original H400 program. My observation on April 15, 1985 on a humid night with my 10" f/5 using up to 150x reads: "small, oval galaxy., somewhat brighter toward the center but otherwise featureless."

The NED data also included many stars also listed a candidate QSO along with some UvS objects also listed as QSO candidates. Like before some of the stars turned out to be rejected QSOs but none of the UvS objects were rejected. So like before I included the UvS objects but not the stars listed also as QSO candidates. Again there were many dozens of these, far too many to note without making a mess of the annotated image. I suspect either we are severely underestimating the quasars in the universe or, more likely, most of these are really just stars that for some reason show high photographic redshift. Like before none had spectroscopic redshifts. Those that did are marked as being QSOs by NED and on my annotated image.

One rather bright asteroid photobombed the image. Usually one this bright has a common name but this one only has its discovery sequence ID. Details on the annotated image.

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

Related Designations for NGC3367

NGC3423

NGC 3423 is a nice, but rarely imaged, face on, multi-armed, blue spiral in Sextans. NED classes it as SA(s)cd while the NGC project says Sc. It is full of star clouds and HII regions. Redshift puts it about 63 million light-years away while Tully Fisher measurements say it is only 35 million light-years away. I found a crude image made from the few HST frames available for it at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/NGC3423-hst-R606GB450.jpg which seems to have the resolution about what I'd expect for the further distance but as my image starts to bring out the HII regions even without H alpha data I have to suspect it is closer than the redshift indicates. In any case, it is a relatively nearby galaxy. It was discovered by William Herschel on February 23. 1784. It's not in either H400 program.

An asteroid happened to be tracking across its face when I took these frames. Thanks to the bright background of the galaxy the color frames show clearly when normally they'd be lost against the blackness of space for an asteroid of this brightness. There's a second asteroid in the image. Details are on the annotated image. Interestingly enough the red POSS 2 plate picked up an asteroid on almost the same path but it had just cleared the galaxy.

In preparing the annotated image I ran into a lot of very faint, distant galaxies nearly all of which were listed at NED as being ELG which stands for emission line galaxy. I've not seen that before. It's apparently a new addition to their database in some areas of the sky. One near the top of the image right of center is listed with a redshift in excess of 1 which puts it nearly 8 billion light-years distant. For me to pick one up at that distance I have to wonder if it doesn't have an active core that rivals a quasar in brightness. That one is more distant than one listed as a Quasar/AGN on the very left edge of the image. Three of these ELGs are hiding by stars. I drew a line to them to show it wasn't the star that was the ELG. In one case I also had to mark the star they were so closely paired and matched in brightness.

There are several quasar candidates in the image (UvES) as well. Another is a candidate BLAGN which stands for Broad Line Active Galactic Nucleus. As is often the case there was a rather obvious galaxy a bit northwest of NGC 3423 that isn't listed at NED at all. There may be more, it was just the only one I happened across by accident.

For 2013 this one was taken on a "good" night for a change.

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

Related Designations for NGC3423

NGC3424

The Leo Minor Triplet? Everyone seems to know the Draco Triplet but few seem aware of this triplet located in Leo Minor. All three were discovered by William Herschel on December 7, 1885. The northeastern two are in the second Herschel 400 observing program from the Astronomical League which I'd thought would help with its visibility but apparently doesn't.

The 3 NGC galaxies, 3413, 3424 and 3430 are considered part of the NGC 3396 galaxy group. NGC 3396 along with NGC 3395 are Arp 270 a colliding pair of galaxies northwest of this field. I'm not sure why the center of the NGC 3396 group is near NGC 3424. To me, that would make it the NGC 3424 group. But then I'm not in charge of naming these groups. NGC 3396 has a redshift distance of about 88 million light-years, which is about the same as 3430 and 3424 in this image at 86 and 82 million light-years respectively. However, NGC 3413 is only half that distance at 43 million light-years so likely not at all related to the others.

NGC 3413 is a rather star cluster filled S0 galaxy with no well-defined nucleus. I think we are seeing it rather edge on but that might be an illusion and its shape really is a spindle. At 43 million light-years its diameter is about 22,500 light-years, a rather small S0 galaxy. Tully Fisher estimates put it at 56 million light-years.

NGC 3424 is considered a barred spiral seen close to edge on. it seems to have mostly old red stars with some blue regions in the outer spiral arms. I'd like to see it more face on as it looks quite interesting. Tully Fisher estimates put it 96 million light-years distant. Using the redshift value its diameter is a respectable 76,000 light-years.

NGC 3430 is the only one seen rather face on and has a very active spiral structure with lots of star clouds down its spiral arms. It is classed as SAB meaning it has a bar but also has characteristics of a standard spiral galaxy. In this case, the bar is rather short with the normal spiral structure dominating. It's Tully Fisher estimated distance is only slightly further than the redshift distance. Using the redshift distance of 86 million light-years its diameter is 99 million light-years, about the size of our galaxy. To me, it has three major arms which were one of Arp's peculiar categories though one arm splits into two unequal arms.

The annotated image covers what few galaxies in the field had redshift data at NED. The position of NGC 3430A was vague in NED but the fuzz patch I've labeled for it is the only object in the area that meets their other values for it. Its size is only 6,600 light-years making it a tiny dwarf galaxy.

Due to conditions, I tried for this one on two nights. Both were similarly poor transparency so I just combined the two nights worth of luminance data. Clouds moved in and cut short the round of color data the second night leaving me with no blue that night and only one of red and green. Thus I didn't get twice normal color data. Still, I think it works well.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=8x10' RG=3x10' B=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC3424

NGC3433

NGC 3433 Is a spiral galaxy about 140 million light-years away in Leo 2 degrees southeast of M96. At first glance or in short exposures it appears as a quite normal 2 armed grand design spiral. But looking closer there are fainter outer arms that are odd arm segments. This one could have made Arp's split arm category. The main arm going under the south side of the galaxy suddenly ends and two segments begin. One is straight and angled up sharply compared to the path the main arm was taking. The other follows the normal curved path but goes wide as if being pulled from the galaxy and extends much further than any other arm segment. Odd as there's nothing in the field that could have caused this. NED classes it as SA(s)C while the NGC project says Sc I. It was discovered by William Herschel on March 11, 1784. It's not in either H400 program.

There's one other NGC galaxy in the image. It is NGC 3444 toward the left edge. It is an Sbc spiral about 440 million light-years away. It was discovered by Albert Marth on March 25, 1865.

While there are many other galaxies in the image only a very few have any redshift detail. All lie at least twice as far away. There are what appears to be two obvious galaxy clusters on the east side of my image and one on the right side. But Ned shows none on the right side where one appears to be and two pairs on the east side.

The first pair consists of WHL J105239.2+101148 which consists of 15 members with no size given at a distance of about 2.7 billion light-years. The anchor galaxy is shown with a slightly different distance but when rounded to 2 significant digits they appear the same. Thus I show it with 2.7 listed twice. North of it, forming the pair, is ZwCl 1050.0+1030 which gives a size of 17 minutes with 97 members but no distance. It is labeled as being "compact." It would include over half my frame.

The other pair also consists of a larger Zwicky cluster that encompasses a smaller cluster. In this case, the small cluster is GMBCG J163.14180+10.07057 to the south of the previous pair. It is listed as having 11 members at a distance of 2.6 billion light-years. Almost the distance of the other non-Zwicky cluster. It is said to have 11 members. Again no size is provided. In this case, the redshift for the BCG is exactly the same as that of the cluster. This cluster appears to be part of ZwCl 1049.8+1017 with 66 members in a 10 minute diameter area. Again no distance is given.

There are 6 asteroids in the image. The brightest is (13220) Kashiwagura at magnitude 17.3. The naming citation reads: "Mitsuru Kashiwagura (b. 1950), a high school teacher in Ooe, Yamagata Prefecture, has been observing occultations since 1994." It was discovered by T. Okuni on July 1, 1997.

The other asteroids are:
(134218) 2005 UE439 at magnitude 19.9
(116865) 2004 FE98 at magnitude 19.4
2004 FM14 at magnitude 19.0
(87711) 2000 SE33 at magnitude 19.5
(71686) 2000 FU30 at magnitude 18.8

All are labeled in the annotated image. The track of (134218) 2005 UE439 is hard to see as it runs into the southern part of NGC 3443.

As usual, labels on the annotated image are to the right of the object unless a line indicates otherwise. Distances are all in billions of light-years.

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

Related Designations for NGC3433