Dick Miller's CCD Images     

     The images below will not show up on the other pages until they are replaced on this one.  You won't see any repeats when you go to one of the links on the left.  Basic information about the telescopes and cameras is at the bottom of this page.
 

   Meade 2045D @ f/10, ST2000XM, 180:48:48:48, 30.4' x 41'

   This was my first image from the Texas Star Party 2012.  The largest galaxy is NGC 4725.  NGC 4712 is the small galaxy near the lower right edge of the field.  For me, the most interesting galaxy is NGC 4747, near the upper left corner.  It is a very blue, somewhat twisted spiral, with a large loop or jet extending out toward the corner of the field for a distance almost twice the length of the main part of the galaxy.  Radio telescope observations in the neutral hydrogen wavelength indicate that 4747 and 4725 are interacting.  I'm not aware of any visible light images which show an interaction, but something is obviously perturbing 4747.

   Meade 2045D @ f/10, ST2000XM, 36:12:12:12, 30.4' x 41'

   M5 is a large (23'), bright (5.7 magnitude), and dense globular.  In very dark skies, it is just visible to the naked eye.  It was discovered by Gottfried Kirch in 1702, 62 years before it was first seen by Messier.  It is one of the largest and oldest globular clusters in our Milky Way.

This is not a very good image.  After I shot it, I discovered that my 2045D was out of collimation.  The fainter stars look decent but the brighter stars have a distinct flare.

   Meade 2045D @ f/10, ST2000XM, 144:48:48:48, 41' x 30.4'

   NGC 4559 has many blue star forming regions, and is believed to be the home of an intermediate mass black hole,  This area of the sky (Coma) is packed with tiny background galaxies.  Megastar and some other sources list the classification as SAB(rs)cd but there appears to be a lot of disagreement about this, with some sources no more specific than "spiral".

It would look much more impressive if imaged with my 10-inch, but I was looking for targets at TSP that were large enough for the Meade, and that I had not already imaged.

IC 3592 is located below the south end of NGC 4559 and several minutes from the left edge of the field.  IC 3593 is about 7' directly below 3592.  Just over 2' below and right of the NGC 4559 core is IC 3550.  NED classifies it as a HII region associated with 4559.  If so, it is exceptionally distant and separated from the parent galaxy.  And it is incorrectly identified in Megastar as IC 4550.

   Meade 2045D @ f/6.3, ST2000XM, 228:64:64:64, 30.4' x 41'

   NGC 4236 was the last of my 2012 Texas Star Party images.  And I had forgotten that it was my only 2010 TSP image.  However, this one is significantly better so I am moving the old one to the Replacements page.

NGC 4236 is a huge galaxy, 22' x 7.2', with a magnitude of 10.1, and has a very low surface brightness.  In three different catalogs, the S.B. is listed as 15.0, 16.0, and 23.5 mag./sq. arc sec.  The last one is obviously an error, but it is dim.  It is a barred spiral and has some interesting features, especially the bright blue "hook" just above and to the left of the core. 

   10-inch Newtonian, ST2000XM, 64(+80 H-a):24:24:24

   This object is so much more interesting and attractive in H-alpha that I have used the H-alpha image for the thumbnail.  The Half and Full size images are in color, and the H-a buttons link to full and half size H-alpha images.

This object consists of a sparse cluster enveloped in a cloud of glowing gas, mostly hydrogen.  It is sometimes called the Spider Nebula, and the nearby object NGC 1931 (outside this field)  is called the Fly.  To me, IC 417 could be called the Angler, if viewed with south up, after the fish with the huge mouth and wormlike head appendage it uses as a lure.  The tendril (appendage) heading off to the left edge of the field looks like an tiny emission version of the Cocoon.

My H-alpha image is not as sharp as it should be because I forgot to focus when I switched to this filter.  All my other filters are parfocal but this one is not.

   10-inch Newtonian, ST2000XM, 72:24:24:24

   Arp 215 is in Arp's group Adjacent Loops, and is classified as SAB(rs)a pec.  The large looping arm west of the core is obvious.  Just above the noise level, a very faint arm exits opposite the brighter arm and forks, with a short section heading north and a much longer section curving out to just past the bright double star.  The central part of the galaxy shows some soft billowy loops and bright blue star-forming regions.

The skinny edge-on galaxy on the left side of the field is UGC 4872.

   10-inch Newtonian, ST2000XM, 48:20:20:20

   This is one big, beautiful galaxy.  It is hard to see how Messier could have missed it for his catalog.  It is larger and brighter than most of the M-galaxies; compare it to M91 and 108 below.  It's a barred spiral and believed to be similar to our own Milky Way.  The deep red-brown patches scattered throughout the central part indicate some thick dust clouds.  This galaxy contains some very bright young globular clusters; the globulars in our galaxy are all old.  The core is very bright.

At the far left edge of the field is UGC 5086.  It is classified as an Irregular although some researchers identify it as a dwarf elliptical.

   10-inch Newtonian, ST2000XM, 60:20:20:20

   M108 is an unusually knotty barred spiral.  The classification is SB(s)cd sp.  It is quite colorful, with a bright yellow central region and bright blue outside that area.  The core is not very bright, especially compared to NGC 2903 above.  It was discovered by Pierre Mechain, not by Messier himself.

The background is blackened a lot more than I like, to get rid of reflections from beta UMa, located about 1.5 degrees to the northeast.  Fortunately, M108 has a sharper than average drop-off of brightness at the edges so I didn't sacrifice much.

   10-inch Newtonian, ST2000XM, 60:20:20:20

   M91 is a classic barred spiral.  It has two delicate arms, dotted with star-forming regions.  All of this is contained in a fairly smooth disk like a rich galactic halo.  The field is full of small galaxies, including one that appears to show through the halo. 

Messier discovered M91 on March 18, 1781 but made a mistake in recording the position, and it was long listed as a "missing" Messier.  It was not until 1969 that an amateur astronomer, William C. Williams, recognized that NGC 4548 was M91.  Messier had described the position in terms of offsets from M58 when he was actually using M89 as his starting point.  Applying the offsets properly to M89 puts the position almost precisely on NGC 4548.

The only other galaxies listed in the older catalogs are CGCG 99-97, located about 6.5' SW of M91, and VCC 1656, right on the west edge of the field about 25% of the way down from the top.  VCC 1656 is classified as an Irregular.  To me, it looks like it consists of three interacting or companion galaxies. 

   10-inch Newtonian, ST2000XM, 72:24:24:24

   NGC 4567 is the upper member of the pair and NGC 4568 is the lower, and larger, member.  Near the top of the field is another NGC object, 4564.  Just as it is surprising that Messier missed NGC 2903, it is surprising that Dr. Arp did not include this pair in his catalog.  If they are not yet interacting, and neither shows a lot of obvious distortion, they are almost certainly headed for it.  There has been a fair amount of research into this question, and the current score seems to be about 2 to 1 in favor of interaction already taking place.  Go to the NED site for 4568 and read the Notes.  The most striking aspect of their appearance is the dramatic color difference.

In addition to the three NGC galaxies, IC 3578 is bright and obvious just over 8' south of 4568, and about 3' back toward 4568 on a line between these two is extremely faint VCC 1681.

   10-inch Newtonian, ST2000XM, 30:10:10:10

   M53 is a large bright globular with a very bright core, and a wide range of star colors.  It ranks high on my list of globs.  It was originally discovered by Bode, and independently rediscovered by Messier.  It is quite large, with a diameter of about 220 light years.  As concentrated as it appears, there are actually huge distances between the individual stars.

Because of the location in Coma, there are a lot of tiny galaxies in the field.  A number of them can be seen through the outer parts of the cluster.  None are very impressive and you need to look carefully to find them.

   10-inch Newtonian, ST2000XM, 40:24:24:24

   The larger galaxy is NGC 3227 and the companion is NGC 3226.  The pair is nearly surrounded by faint loops, although these are extremely faint at the south end.  This could be gas but I think it is probably a halo of stars thrown out of the galaxies by their interaction.  Notice the dark brown, almost black, area slightly above and right of the NGC 3227 core.  This in normally indicative of thick dust.

There is a pair of apparently interacting galaxies at the right edge of the field, just below Arp 94.  This is CGCG 94-22 and is classified as a galactic pair.  There are a number of other small galaxies found only in the 2MASX or SDSS catalogs, without any particularly interesting information.  For me, the most interesting object other than Arp 94 itself is the intensely blue object (star?) at the top edge of the field, directly above 94.  I don't think I've ever captured anything this blue. 

I only shot 40 minutes of luminosity because I already had an equal amount which I shot in 2008.  However, the new data was so much better that the final image would have been degraded by including the old data.  Fortunately, this is a fairly bright object so it shows fairly well even with the short exposure.

   10-inch Newtonian, ST2000XM, 72:24:24:24

   Arp 184 could easily be called "The Ear".  Notice the wispy tendrils sweeping off to the north (top) side of the galaxy.  These are likely the result of an interaction but the other galaxy is not apparent.  It could have been largely absorbed and now shows only as one of the "lumps" in 184, or it could be on the opposite side from our viewpoint.  The color is surprisingly yellow if it has, in fact, undergone a recent interaction.

This field is full of background galaxies.  Three of the brightest are UGC 3342, at the left edge, CGCG 329-9, about halfway to the bottom of the field from Arp 184, and CGCG 329-11, a little above and halfway to the left edge from 184.  Also, there is a little Irregular just over 2' left and down from CGCG 329-11.

   10-inch Newtonian, ST2000XM, 80:28:28:28

   Since I've started naming objects, I'll call Arp 279 the "Crab Galaxy".  I think it looks more like a crab than the far better known Crab Nebula.  The primary galaxy is NGC 1253 and the secondary is 1253A.  The secondary is a particularly unusual object.

There is another apparently interacting pair right at the left edge near the bottom of the field.  As near as I can tell, the lower member is cataloged as KUG 0312-31, while the upper member is a 2MASX object.