Mighty image Rick. NGC 3367 is one of my favourites.

Stefan


"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
om...


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.

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.

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 a QSO candidates. Again there were many dozen 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 photo bombed the image. Usually one this
bright has a common name but this one only has its discovery sequence ID.

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

Rick
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