NGC3780

NGC 3780 is a many armed spiral often considered by some as similar to M 101. Like M 101 it is in Ursa Major but is in the bowl of the dipper rather than above its handle. It is about 110 million light-years distant by redshift and 150 million by the median of 5 Tully Fisher measurements. Assuming the 110 million light-year distance it is much smaller at about 90,000 light-years across (120,000 if the larger distance is correct). While it is said to have HII regions all are under 1" of arc in size so I didn't pick them up. Like M 101 it is highly unsymmetrical in its shape and spiral structure. NED listed a couple of its knots as separate galaxies, I didn't annotate them even though NED didn't consider them parts of the galaxy. Their redshift was the same indicating they are just star clouds in the galaxy. The galaxy was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel but isn't in either of the two Herschel 400 lists which I find is an odd omission.

To the southeast is NGC 3794 which is also NGC 3804. In fact 3804 is the more correct number. It was discovered twice by William Herschel in 1789 but his position for NGC 3794 was off by 30" of time leading him to not catch his mistake though his descriptions of the two match. This one, being fainter than 3780 also failed to make either Herschel 400 list. In this case NED also points to a bright blob in the galaxy as being a different galaxy. But the redshift puts it 5 times further away so it likely is a separate galaxy. I've noted it in the annotated image.

NGC 3780 was discovered by William Herschel on April 16, 1789. NGC 3794 was discovered by him on April 14, 1789 but RA wrong. He later found it on March 18m, 1790 and got the postion right. Neither he nor Dreyer caught this error so it has a double listing in the NGC.

The third major galaxy in the image is UGC 06596, a rather large irregular galaxy at about the same redshift as NGC 3780 so the two are likely related. It is about 45,000 light-years across making it 3 times larger than the large Magellanic Cloud. Their projected separation is about 475,000 light-years putting it 3 time further away than the large cloud is from our galaxy. I consider it unlikely it is a satellite of NGC 3780 given these figures. It too has a star cloud in it that NED lists as a separate galaxy but this one has the same redshift as UGC 06596. Thus it appears to be just a bright star cloud in the galaxy rather than a separate galaxy. I suppose it is possible that it is something being digested but I rather doubt that. I find nothing on it in the literature to help.

Two galaxy clusters are seen above NGC 3780. I'd have considered this to be one rather than two but apparently two different redshifts are involved. I point the the Bright Cluster Galaxy likely anchoring each cluster. The redshifts of both clusters is photographic so can be a bit iffy. The BCG of the closer cluster however has a spectroscopic redshift putting it, and thus the cluster closer than the photographic redshift would indicate and making more likely these really are two different clusters. I wish there was redshift data for the blue galaxy below the BCG of the more distant cluster. Apparently it is not related to either cluster.

Objects with designations other than those that are just its coordinates are listed by catalog name. Otherwise just by the notation of G for galaxy, GC for galaxy cluster, GG for galaxy group and Q for quasar.

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

Related Designations for NGC3780

NGC3801

NGC 3801 is in the center of a small group of NGC galaxies, some north and south out of my limited field of view. The cluster is located in the tail of Leo about 170 million light-years distant. It certainly is an interesting galaxy. Highly disturbed by some encounters in the past with plumes going every which way and two dust lanes at right angles to each other. Rather red so apparently the interaction was some time in the past. It shut down star formation and now only smaller old red stars are left it would seem. Or is the red color due to it shrouded in a dust cloud caused by the interaction that masks its blue stars? Doesn't look like dust reddening to me. NED classes it as S0/a though I see little indication of any spiral structure. Looks more S0 or E to me but with dust. Could it be two spirals merging into an elliptical? Maybe but I found nothing supporting this. NGC Project classes it simply as S0? It certainly is a very active galaxy for its classification. Something massive is going on it appears. Note the asteroid trail in the southern part of the galaxy. This one is very interesting to many CCD users. I'll have more on it in a bit. Edit: Yesterday some new information was released on NGC 3801 -- see below.

Above it is NGC 3802. An edge on spiral that NED also classes S0/a. Looks like a typical spiral to me so here I can't fathom where the S0 came from. Such galaxies rarely have a nice dust lane in the disk's plane like it has. NGC project says simply S... for a classification.

NGC 3806 is a nice face on barred spiral that is very blue and of a rather faint surface brightness. So while its light comes mostly from new young stars there aren't many of them or it would be quite a bit brighter. NED classes it as SABb. The NGC project says Sb/SBb. Apparently, they aren't sure of the bar? Maybe it is an elongated nucleus rather than a bar?

NGC 3803 is a rather tiny galaxy to make the NGC list. It has a high surface brightness which attracted visual observers I suppose. It is so small NED didn't try to classify it. The NGC project called it simply E. Seems rather blue in color for that classification

NGC 3790 is the only one NED and the NGC Project agree on. NED says S0/a and the NGC Project SO-a.

Two other galaxies may be members. Though KUG 1137+179 at 190 million light-years has a somewhat different redshift it doesn't rule it out as a possible member. NED says it is simply a spiral. CGCG 097-046 is classed at NED as simply S0 which appears reasonable to me.

As is often the case I came up with a couple possible galaxies not listed at NED. Both are large faint puffs. I suppose they could be IFN or something akin to that. I doubt that, however. I see both in the Sloan image but with no resolution. They are east and southeast of NGC 3801. I've marked them with a question mark on the annotated image.

Several galaxy clusters are in the image.
NSCS J114128+174623 has 46 members
NSCS J114131+174924 has 41 members
GMBCG J175.40459+17.65904 has 14 members
GMBCG J175.38869+17.87717 has 10 members
GMBCG J174.85594+17.58540 has a lucky 13 members.

That brings us to the asteroid. I didn't know of its existence until I looked up what asteroid had wandered into the image. It is (35197) Longmire at magnitude 18.2. That ring any bells to you CCD users? It did for me. I had to look up the naming citation to see if it was the Longmire I was thinking of. I figured my guess would be wrong but was happy to see I was right. Here's the citation.

"Matthew J. Longmire (b. 1958) is an electrical engineer who co-founded a small CCD brand that in 1991 developed star tracking equipment, sparking the CCD revolution in the world of amateur astronomy."

He's one of the founders of SBIG that made my CCDs and the ST-4 I used to guide my film images for many years. In fact, it is the ST-4 the "star tracking equipment) the citation refers to. Apparently, they have a thing about no company names in naming citations. Serendipity strikes again.

Edit: Now for the new information. Yesterday I received an email from JPL/NASA and an astronomy club member about a press release from JPL/NASA about a "cosmic leaf blower" galaxy. Yep, they are talking about NGC 3801. Turns out my surmises are pretty much correct. The above was written some time ago as I worked on the annotated image. I left it alone other than the last sentence. Sometimes I get it pretty close to right. Note the sidebar transposes the galaxy to NGC 3810.

I wasn't going to release this one so soon and out of order as I didn't like the galaxy's color. Just too red for a spiral. I was going to look again at the data to see if I screwed something up but the color matches the press releases description -- their image is false color so of no help. Though I don't see the blue stars Galex sees in the UV part of the spectrum. Here's the news release from April 3, 2012.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-094

I normally preprocess an image to see if it is worth further work. That happens a couple months before I finally process the image. In this case, I'm working way out of order. I did the preprocess of this late April 2011 image, saw it would work so did the research. I finished my write up a couple days ago planning on doing the full process of the image in a couple months as I'm still image processing from February 2011. But when I got the press release yesterday afternoon I dropped my February processing and worked on this one finding the asteroid which was another surprise. After working frantically since then I finally have it ready to go. I'll be returning to February images after this. I research well ahead of processing as I use the time to contact various astronomers I know to find out if they have any information on the object. They are pretty busy and often need a couple month's time to get back to me. I skipped that step thanks to the press release. If I hear back with additional information I'll cover it in a later post.

14" LX 200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC3801

NGC3810

NGC 3810 is a beautiful near face on spiral that for some reason virtually no one seems to image. It is located in eastern Leo and may be part of the Virgo Galaxy cluster. I find various distance estimates. Redshift says 62 million light-years while the median value at NED of non-redshift measurements says 59 million. That is a good agreement. Then the HST web page on their image of the galaxy says 50 million light-years. The HST image and text can be found at: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1006a/ . Note that this image was taken with blue-green and infrared filters so misses H alpha light and is not a natural color image though not too distorted other than missing H alpha totally. It is oriented with north to the left. My image has north at the top.

It was discovered by William Herschel on March 15, 1784 and was put into the first Herschel 400 list published by the Astronomical League, one reason it went on my to-do list. Notes at NED indicate its HII regions are 1" of arc or smaller so not seen by the authors. Thus I was taken aback when I processed this image and many HII regions popped out without my doing anything. Especially since the Sloan image I saw showed these areas as blue star clusters. I didn't use an H alpha filter nor push H alpha with Lab color techniques. The red was just there. In fact, I toned it down some as it looked too strong to me. The only other image I could find was one by Adam Block when he was at Kitt Peak but even that image showed them only weakly. I'm at a loss to explain my results. Especially since conditions were fast going downhill and I saved red to last since it is least hurt when this happens. Maybe somehow the thick haze helped? You can see it even in the luminance images in the lone asteroid trail which dims in the middle due to the thick haze getting even thicker. Processing this one was "interesting" due to the bright haze the star on the left side of the image threw across the entire field. I almost canned this one and put it up for a reshoot next year upon seeing how poor the data was but gave it a shot which turned out far better than I expected.

The annotated image shows many galaxies about 1.05 billion light-years distant. They must be part of some cluster but I couldn't find what it might be. Could be it isn't cataloged. I'm somewhat puzzled by a galaxy cluster and galaxy in the upper right corner. Both are listed at NED at the same coordinates though those of the cluster have a larger error circle the center of the circle matches the position of a galaxy. That's quite common as they use the bright cluster galaxy for the position when there is one. But this time the galaxy isn't listed as being the BCG and has a rather different redshift. That happens when the cluster's redshift is photographic and the galaxies spectroscopic. But in this case both are spectroscopic so I'd expect close if not exact agreement. That wasn't the case. I don't know if the galaxy is unrelated and just happens to lie in the same line of sight as the cluster or if they are related and one of the redshift measurements is inaccurate (or both are).

There are three quasars in the image, two very blue. The third is the most distant but is listed as a quasar candidate. What else it could be at that redshift I don't know but it is listed a broad absorption line object and quasar candidate so I marked it with QC in the annotated image. It too is blue just not as strongly blue as the other two.

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

Related Designations for NGC3810

NGC3811

NGC 3811 is a highly disturbed spiral galaxy in the hind legs of Ursa Major about 150 to 160 million light-years distant. While the main part of the galaxy is a bit under 50,000 light-years in diameter its plumes double its size to a bit over 100,000 light-years. It is classed as an SB(r)cd: Starburst galaxy by NED. The NGC project says it is SBc. The problem is how did it get so disturbed. NED shows a galaxy embedded in the spiral arm on the east just below a rather bright knot. It didn't show clearly in my annotated image so I've attached the SDSS image annotated to point out the possible galaxy. Is it really a galaxy or just part of the galaxy? It is quite blue so to me appears to be just another star knot in the arm like the one above it or bigger and brighter ones on the opposite side of the galaxy. In any case, it is quite likely the appearance of 3811 is due to something it has or is digesting. This would also account for its starburst status in the core.

It was discovered by William Herschel on February 9, 1788. It isn't listed in either of the two Herschel 400 observing programs.

The rest of its field contains nothing but quite distant galaxies and a couple quasars. Only a handful of these had redshift data at NED. All that did are shown in the annotated image. The Minor Planet Center listed no asteroids in the field. Not surprising at this rather high declination that puts it well above the main asteroid belt.

Conditions went south as I was taking this and I had to throw out a lot of frames. I thought most blue frames were badly damaged to unusability but it turned out only one was. I had taken 8 luminance frames but only three were good and one sort of usable. I included it as it did help a bit with the plumes but only slightly.

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

Related Designations for NGC3811

NGC3817

This may be one of the busiest fields I've imaged. It certainly resulted in a complex annotated image that took me several times longer than usual. Fortunately, I'd worked ahead a bit knowing this was coming. The field contains Hickson 58, a group of 5 or maybe 8 galaxies many, or all, of which made the NGC catalog as well as two rather nearby Abell galaxy clusters, #1354 at the bottom and #1356 at the top. It also contains many galaxies not in any of these three groups, some of which are quite interesting. Add in that some of the NGC galaxies have two different NGC numbers and things get even more complex.

I'll start with Hickson 58 as that was my target. It is listed as having 8 members at NED and 5 everywhere else and is about 300 million light-years distant in the constellations of Virgo and Leo -- the dividing line is above NGC 3822/3848 and below NGC 3819. The problem is NED lists only 5 members, all NGC galaxies so I can't tell what the other three are or if that is even right. No other source I found says 8. The major ones are NGC 3822/3848, and NGC NGC 3825/3852. Both found By William Herschel on March 15, 1784. So why two designations for each? Here's the explanation at the NGC project: (NGC project site is being rebuilt (very slowly but I got this before it died)

"NGC 3848 is probably NGC 3822, and NGC 3852 is probably NGC 3825. The
two questionable identifications are a pair found by William Herschel on 15
March 1784, III 35 and III 36. He describes them as ``Two on parallel, 3 or 4
arcmin distant. Both eF, vS,'' and assigns a single position to the pair.

Dreyer, in the Notes to his 1912 edition of WH's papers, claims for N3848,
``Observed by Bigourdan, place correct.'' For N3852, he says, ``RA possibly 1
minute too great (see II 64 [NGC 4352]). Not found by Bigourdan.''

This is curious, as Bigourdan clearly states ``Not seen, at least in a sure
way'' for N3848, and ``Not seen'' for N3852. Perhaps there is a note in one
of Bigourdan's Comptes Rendus papers. In any case, Bigourdan has precise
measurements for NGC 3822 and NGC 3825, and identifies them correctly. They
are 2 minutes west (not 1 minute) of WH's positions for N3848 and N3852, and
they match WH's description well."



NGC 3822/3848 is member A of the HCG 58 group and classed as Sb though I've seen S0 (NGC project says S0?) for it that doesn't seem reasonable to me. It was discovered by William Herschel on March 15 1784 and got the NGC 3848 designation by Dreyer. A month later on April 15, 1784, he found it again. Neither he nor Dreyer caught the duplication so it got the NGC 3822 number

NGC 3825/3852 is member B of HCG 58. While redshift puts it as a member of the group its Tully Fisher distance estimate is wildly different at nearly 500 million light-years. So far off I didn't include it in the annotated version. Like NGC 3825/3852 these were discovered on April 15 and May 15 of 1854. Sounds like he had the same positional error one of these nights. I can't find which ones were more accurate.

NGC 3817 is HCG 58C and is considered a triple galaxy. ASK 272459 is on the left and SDSS J114151.70+101809.0 on the right. Buried in the glow of it is a quasar candidate shown on the annotated image. The galaxy has no redshift listed at NED so may or may not be a companion. The left galaxy has virtually the same redshift so likely is a satellite of the main galaxy. The main galaxy is classed as SB0/a at NED and SB0-a at the NGC project. It was discovered by John Herschel on January 18, 1828.

NGC 3819 is HCG 058D. NED lists it as E1 while the NGC Project says E. It was found by John Hershel on January 18, 1828

NGC 3820 is HCG 058E. Ned and the NGC project lists it as Sbc. Its discovery came later on April 29, 1865 by Heinrich d'Arrest.

The only other NGC galaxy is in the lower left corner. It is classed as Sc. It was discovered on April 15, 1784 by William Herschel. While not considered part of Hickson 58 it does lie at about the same distance so likely is part of the same group. It's too far from the others to meet Hickson's compact requirement.

The two Abell cluster's center positions are shown on the annotated image. Abell 1354 is listed as being morphology class III which means it lacks any type of a central large galaxy and is rather disorganized with little concentration. Though ASK 272855 isn't far from the center and larger than the rest there are others nearly as big scattered in the 14 minute field. Abell 1356 is class II-III. Class II clusters are more organized with some condensation toward galaxies not quite large enough to be considered Cd or a Bright Cluster Galaxy. Abell 1356 would be somewhere between II and III. To me, it is very similar to 1354 in that it has two rather large galaxies not far from its center, LEDA 139664 and ASK 272849 that aren't much larger or brighter than several others in the group. Several other galaxy groups are seen throughout the image.

One galaxy I wanted to know more about is MAPS-NGP O-494_053290. It is to the east-northeast of NGC 3825/3852. It lies close to ASK 273268 but are they at the same distance and thus related? I find no redshift or other distance estimates for the MAPS galaxy. It has such highly warped arms I wish we could get a closer look at it.

Conditions went to pot on this one several times while I was trying to get its data. Especially troublesome was the blue data that got hit by clouds and bad seeing each time. The bad seeing was so bad it created huge stars about 7" FWHM rather than the 3" for the red and green stars. I tried on 4 occasions all failed. I used the two best blue frames but between cloud dimming and the seeing I ended up with blue rings around even rather red stars that no amount of deconvolution could seem to cure. I suspect the galaxies, while rather red are shown more red than they really are due to the dearth of blue data.

Even the luminance was hard hit by a thick haze. I used the 6 best frames but my limiting magnitude is a good 1.5 magnitudes brighter than normal thanks to the haze. While that was better some nights I tried for the blue data the seeing was awful so I didn't even try luminance those nights. Instead of trying for good blue I might have been better off to take bad red and green. Sounds crazy but it often works better than waiting for a good night for the third color that never comes.

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

Related Designations for NGC3817

NGC3821

I like it when I can catch 2 objects on my to-do list in one image. They are in the hindquarters of Leo about 280 million light-years distant by both redshift and non-redshift measurements. Both are interesting. NGC 3816 appears to be the result of a merger or collision though I didn't find any papers suggesting this. The UGC does call it "Slightly asymmetric" and says "spiral, disturbed?" It's obviously highly disturbed with huge plumes. Including those plumes, it is over 300,000 light-years across. Even ignoring the plumes it is still some 175,000 light-years across. Note PGC 036349 to the east. It has a normally bright northern half but much of the southern half is exceedingly faint. Could it have interacted with NGC 3816? I came up empty trying to verify or deny this. NGC 3816 was discovered on May 9, 1864 by Heinrich d'Arrest. It seems bright enough Herschel should have seen it but that didn't happen.

The other object on my to-do list was NGC 3821, an obvious ring galaxy which NED notes as having a RET nucleus. I had to look that one up. It stands for retired. Now I'm retired but what's a retired nucleus? The term refers to galaxy cores that were starburst cores with starburst activity in the past and are now showing ionization as if still active but that is caused only by the ton of evolved low-mass stars created by this activity long ago. I may be retired but I don't have anything that could be called low-mass unfortunately. Thanks to the ring it is also a large spiral at 145,000 light-years in diameter. The galaxy was discovered by William Herschel on April 26, 1785.

When I went to frame the image, the sky reported another NGC galaxy nearby that would be in the field if I moved it a bit west which I did. It is a rather typical S0-: galaxy, NGC 3805. It is not as unusual as the other two but is also quite large as some S0 galaxies are. I can trace it out to at least 200,000 light-years across. Including the really faint outer reaches, it is likely somewhat larger if I'd have given it more exposure time. It is slightly more distant by redshift than the first two being some 320 million light-years distant again this is both by redshift and non-redshift measurements. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 25, 1785 a day before seeing NGC 3821. Neither are in either of the Herschel 400 observing programs.

This field is on the northwestern edge of the Abell 1367 galaxy cluster which has a redshift distance of 315 million light-years according to NED. Thus these three and many others in the field are likely members of this large cluster about 3/4 of a degree away. My 2008 image of this cluster can be seen here: http://www.spacebanter.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=4630&stc=1

One rather interesting galaxy that's twice as distant as the Abell cluster is LEDA 1617816. It has unusually sharp edges, quite blue with two arms that look more like hands on a clock than spiral arms. They don't even come off at opposite angles as is usually the case. I was wondering how NED would classify it. I wasn't expecting R(K)3 as the classification. I think this is the rarely seen Yerkes classification scheme but usually, the middle letter is lower case, not upper case. What this means is the galaxy is rotationally symmetric (doesn't have an obvious spiral or elliptical structure). Has mostly K class stars in the core region and is somewhat tilted to our line of site (1 face on -- 7 edge on). There seems some disagreement if rotationally symmetric should be denoted with a "D" or with an "R". Sources vary on this but all would use lower case for the class of core stars seen. So maybe this isn't the correct interpretation. It's all I could come up with.

The night I took this was quite iffy. I started with blue expecting things to not be good enough for luminance. The blue was indeed weak but suddenly the sky cleared so I changed over to luminance but that soon went downhill with the last couple luminance frames being very weak. It then seemed to clear so I tried for green which went well. I thought red had too but when I went to process the data I find the second red image was lost entirely to clouds. I set to redo blue that was so week but the clouds that killed red only slightly parted so the blue redo was also very weak. Thus I ended up with 2 good luminance frames, two weak ones, 4 weak blue, two great green (least useful of the bunch) and only one red but that one was pretty good and had no satellites. Since I didn't notice this until I was processing it and it was too late to redo it I am going with what I was able to get. The result is a rather noisy image that still manages to show much of what I was after.

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

Related Designations for NGC3821

NGC3877

NGC 3877 is a near edge on Sc spiral galaxy in Ursae Majoris just south of Chi Ursae Majoris. That blankety-blank star cast nasty gradients across the image forcing me to do some heavy duty removal. I had moved the galaxy well north of the center and a bit to the side in an effort to reduce the issues but nothing I did could eliminate them.

NGC 3877 had a 12th magnitude type II supernova in 1998 that equaled the galaxy's total light output. William Herschel found this one on February 5, 1788. My main reason for imaging it is it is an original Herschel 400 object. While the Herschel 400 guide seemed to think it rather hard and starlike my comments from May 4, 1985 reads: "Very good edge on with dust lane. Seems more interesting than its listed magnitude would indicate." I'm not sure what I was seeing for a dust lane! Sure no sign of one in my image. I probably was seeing the dark lane giving the galaxy a weak black eye effect and not seeing but the central part of it rather than the full extent seen in my image. Now, where's a time machine so I can go back and ask myself about this? Both redshift and Tully Fisher measurements put the galaxy about 50 million light-years distant, very good agreement for a change.

It appears it might be a flocculent galaxy if it was seen face on as I see no real spiral structure but more disconnected short segments. They do make it a rather photogenic galaxy. A note at NED indicates it has many HII regions some quite bright. However, none show up in my image but for a faint hint of something at the north end below the centerline. It may be just a red field star, however. Even the Sloan image shows it may be a star. There is a bright blue star cluster southwest of the core that likely is full of HII emission if seen in H alpha light. Maybe that's the bright one the note mentions.

Transparency was poor when this was taken. That plus the glare from Chi Ursae Majoris reduced my limiting magnitude by a full magnitude from normal. Many things that would have shown up in the annotated image didn't come through the gunk. I did include two that just barely show in the TIFF version. I don't know if they barely survived the JPG lossy compression. You may need to up the brightness of the screen and enlarge the image to find these. Normally they'd be easy at magnitude 21.3 but not under the sky this night, March 2, 2014. Still, the galaxy came through fairly well.

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

Related Designations for NGC3877

NGC3884

NGC 3884 is a huge ringed galaxy in northeastern Leo about 330 million light-years distant. It is likely a member of the Abell 1367 galaxy cluster. The cluster is centered about three quarters of a degree southwest of this field but is over 2 degrees in radius so easily extends to this region. It is listed at 315 million light-years distant. NGC 3884 is a somewhat red and dead galaxy, as are the other spirals that are likely cluster members. This is not uncommon in clusters where multiple mergers have driven much of the cool gas out of the galaxy and heated the rest to where it can't form stars. At a size of some 215,000 light-years, it appears NGC 3884 has had plenty of mergers. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 27, 1785 but is in neither of the H400 observing programs.

The field contains several large and somewhat bright galaxies I'd have thought Herschel would have seen but apparently didn't. North of NGC 3884 is the double galaxy IC 732. The pair appear to be interacting. The northern galaxy seems to have a core that is not in the center but this may be more perspective and it may have a warped disk adding to this appearance. The pair, or maybe only the southern galaxy were (was) discovered by Guillaume Bigourdan on March 29, 1886. His coordinates point to the southern galaxy but his notes say: "Extremely faint and diffuse, but its existence is certain; I can see brighter points in it which may be stars 13.4-13.5 (magnitude)". Some say this indicates he saw both galaxies with the core of the northern one appearing star-like to him. Assuming the two are interacting and thus at the same distance from us the two span a distance of 134,000 light-years.

Near the right edge of my image is PGC 36609. I measure its size at nearly 150,000 light-years making it considerably larger than our Milky Way galaxy or even M31. NED classifies it as S0 which is odd as it has some nice spiral arms. I'd say Sab rather than S0. The arms are faint but quite obvious.

The other large galaxy is PGC 36639 an S0/a galaxy by NED's classification. I'd add to that saying it has an outer ring that should be noted in its classification. It too is much larger than either our galaxy or M31 at 140,000 light-years in diameter thanks to that faint outer ring.

The image contains three rather bright asteroids and four fainter ones. The brightest has no color trail while the two slightly fainter ones do. This is because two of the luminance frames were taken two nights before the rest of the frames including the other two luminance and all color frames. It was only in the frame that first night. All others were in the frame only the second night that did have color data. This also explains why the luminance trails are the same length as each color's trail. Clouds had moved in that first night and I had to shut down. Those first frames aren't all that great but again, due to clouds the second night I only took two more luminance frames planning on taking more after the color data but clouds had another idea. Typical of what little imaging I have been able to do this year.

But thanks to the Paramount's accuracy I combined the two nights luminance frames without needing any alignment! Since dither doesn't help much with only 4 frames they were not dithered making this possible. Now if the sky would work as well it would make this old geezer really happy.

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

Related Designations for NGC3884

NGC3893

NGC 3893 and NGC 3896 are a pair of interacting galaxies in Ursa Major some 50 to 65 million light-years distant depending on which estimate you trust. Redshift says about 54 million light-years for NGC 3893 and 51 million light-years for NGC 3896. NED classes NGC 3893 as SAB(rs)c: though some notes at NED say they can't detect the bar. Neither can the NGC Project as they say Sc I. It has a lot of HII regions but MOST show blue rather than HII pink in my image. My color data was weak so that might be responsible. Also, 2" resolution may be needed to see THEM and I had far less than that. NGC 3896 is classed by NED as SB0/a: pec by NED and SB0-a by NED. It appears to be a mess to me. I see no real structure but my seeing wasn't very good. There appears to be some tidal debris south of NGC 3893. Most of this appears to me to have come from NGC 3896 reducing it to the mess it is today. They were discovered by William Herschel on February 9, 1788. NGC 3893 is in the original H400 program. My log from that on the night of May 4, 1984 using a 12.5" f/5 scope at up to 150x on an excellent desert night reads: "Interesting spiral with much detail though ill-defined nucleus. Four other faint galaxies are seen in the same 50x field. Seems to be about 10-11th magnitude."

While Sloan data covers the field NED has only a few redshift measurements for this field as yet. I wasn't going to prepare an annotated image but then noticed some really small and faint galaxies were much closer than larger and brighter galaxies. Because of that I went ahead and made one. Just don't expect much info on it.

To the west-southwest of NGC 3893 is MAPS-NGP O_171_0077430 at 440 million light-years It appears to be highly distorted and may be two interacting galaxies. My resolution is too poor to tell much and NED has nothing useful on it.

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

Related Designations for NGC3893

NGC3898

NGC 3898 is one of 4 galaxies in the NGC 3898 galaxy group. NGC 3888 on the far right of my image is also considered one of the 4 but its distance is nearly twice as great by redshift. NGC 3821 well out of the field to the right is a third member. I haven't been able to determine what the 4th member is. The only other galaxy in the image at the right distance is a faint, tiny dwarf galaxy, LEDA 2832082. It is only 7500 light-years across. I find no indication it's the 4th member. This field is in the bowl of the Big Dipper on the edge of the Abell 1377 galaxy cluster which lies over 10 times further away but does explain the many galaxies in the image in the 680 to 750 million light-year range.

NGC 3898 is a rather drab low contrast spiral. The arms are only slightly blue and barely stand out from the disk of the galaxy. The bright disk portion of the galaxy is about 60,000 light-years across but it has some very faint outer star clouds if you look really closely. Including these, it is some 144,000 light-years across. It would be a good target for those putting many hours into an image to pick up its full extent.

NGC 3888, while considered part of the 4 galaxy group is almost twice as distant by redshift at 120 million light-years. If correct I measure its size at 75,000 light-years with a hint it may be 80,000 light-years across in a deeper image than mine. Its spiral structure is easily seen compared to that of NGC 3898. There is a galaxy below its right edge. I found nothing on it. It is listed as a separate galaxy, SDSS J114728.03+555720.1 at NED. Could it be at about the same distance as NGC 3888 and thus have interacted with it or been a result of something interacting with NGC 3888? Also, NED shows what it calls a separate galaxy on the edge of an arm of NGC 3888. To me, it is no different than star clouds in the galaxy. Another NED lists as part of the galaxy. Why this one isn't also so listed I don't know. In any case, I've included it in the annotated image.

Both of these galaxies were discovered by William Herschel on April 14, 1789. NGC 3898 was my target since it is one of the objects in the original Herschel 400 observing program. Somehow I entered the coordinates wrong on my to-do list so it moved it high. I'd not noticed the other two NGC galaxies would be in the frame or I'd have moved NGC 3898 east and a bit north. At least I caught them, just framed poorly. My log entry from April 16, 1985 on a fair but humid night with somewhat reduced transparency at 60 to 150 power reads: "A small puff of a galaxy with a bright Nucleus. Seems more circular than the writer says. Forms a low power pair with NGC 3888. This galaxy is in Ursa Major rather than Leo as the guide says. That makes up for NGC 3655 that is in Leo but the guide says is in Ursa Major." Apparently, I was seeing only the center of NGC 3898 as I'd not call it small. That may explain why I saw it more circular than it is. The humidity may have been hurting more than I realized. Also, I was more concerned with errors in the preliminary H400 list than saying much about the galaxy itself.

There's a third NGC galaxy in the image, NGC 3889. It appears to be a member of the Abell cluster. I didn't mention it so likely it was lost in the humid sky. While it looks much smaller than the other two, that's because of its distance. I measure it at 160,000 light-years in size. It was discovered by Lawrence Parsons on April 1, 1878. While the Lord often took credit for discoveries by his assistants this appears likely one of those he actually found. I need to borrow Sherman and Peabody's Wayback (or is it WAYBAC?) machine to verify this.

Being high in the north above the ecliptic it isn't surprising there were no asteroids in the image. Otherwise, it is a rather typical image for background objects. I do want to point out a pair of Alberio like galaxies on the far left of my frame, one orange and one blue. They even have similar redshift distance. NED lists the blue one as a rejected candidate quasar. I assume its blue color is involved with it being taken as a possible quasar.

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

Related Designations for NGC3898