VII Zw 279 A Ring Galaxy

I Zw 279 or how to write several paragraphs with nothing to write about. But I like to type so here goes, well, nothing much.

As I've mentioned before, ring galaxies in which the ring has no apparent connection to the core but for a rather even, faint, disk fascinate me. How is such a structure formed? VII Zw 279 is yet another galaxy of this type. I assumed there'd be something on it but except for a listing in a catalog of catalogs I couldn't find a thing on it. Other than it is a 17.0 magnitude ring galaxy. The CGPG says of it "Red, circular ring galaxy." I saw that red mentioned which caught my interest as rings are usually blue not red. After I processed the image it was indeed blue. I checked the POSS II plates which also show it as blue. I found no other sources of color data but the POSS plates. I assume the red refers to the core which usually is rather red in these galaxies. Though when I checked the POSS I plates the ring looks neutral to faintly red in color. That may be the cause of the red remark. Why the difference I don't know. NED classifies it as (R)SA0^+^.

The galaxy is located in Draco though the western 40% or so of the image is in Camelopardalis. The field is only 10 degrees from the pole. Not one galaxy in the field has a redshift value at NED, not even VII Zw 279. So I have no idea how distant it is or how big it is.

Below and left is a strange looking galaxy that sort of reminds me of a horseshoe crab with its tail cocked to one side. It isn't in either NED nor SIMBAD. Its coordinates are 09h 29m 52.3s +80d 15m 8s. Is it two interacting galaxies? It is at the bottom left of the cropped image. There are a lot of very faint, likely very distant galaxies in the field but I found nothing on any of them worth mentioning.

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

Rick