ASTRO: NGC 5448

NGC 5448 is an interesting spiral in the southeast corner of Ursa Major.
Redshift puts it 100 million light-years distant though Tully Fisher
measurements average out to about 120 million light-years. Rather good
agreement actually. Assuming the 100 million light-year distance it is
about 120,000 light-years in diameter making it a rather large spiral.
NED classifies it as (R)SAB(r)a with and having an AGN (Active Galactic
Nucleus). The NGC Project disagrees say simply it is SBb. It has a
faint outer disk beyond a bright ring like feature created by its spiral
arms that nearly overlap. To my eye the outer disk appears warped.
That may be an illusion. It was much stronger in the FITS files than
when processed with color added. No papers on it that I found mentions
any warp so it likely is an illusion I can't shake. It also has some
strange dark lanes across the disk inside the ring on the south side.
Looks like a tot drew them in with a crayon.

There are some rather interesting truly distorted galaxies in the image
that I didn't realize were there until I started looking around the
field. Southeast of NGC 5448 is ASK 401001.0 at 390,000 light-years and
further southeast is ASK 401000.0 also at 390,000 light years. They
both appear "sloshed". That is their cores are well off center. Is
this due to a near collision between these two sometime in the past?
Then north of these two is ASK 401014.0 at 900,000 light-years. It is a
near edge on disk galaxy with an oddly warped disk. The eastern side is
quite curved but the western side is less bent.

My color data was severely hit by thickening clouds. Red was taken when
it was rather clear but the clouds moved in on the first green. It is
very weak. The second green mostly blank. The first blue was weak but
usable with the last blue lost to clouds. I never had a chance to
reshoot it. I mostly recreated the green channel. While I cut down the
red and boosted the blue it resulted in some poor color, especially for
the distant galaxies which tended to look more orange than golden. I
tried to adjust for NGC 5448 and ignored what it did to the distant
galaxies.

There's a lot of fine detail in NGC 5448 I didn't catch due to the
seeing. If I can ever get a night for 0.5" pixels it should really show
some nice features lost to the gunk. With my large backlog of
unprocessed images I should just ignore those like the this and the last
two I've posted. But then most of the spring was this way so I'd wipe
out the backlog with one big delete. So I'm processing anything I can
sort of salvage.

14" LX200R, L=4x10' R=2x10' G=1x10+pseudo green B=1x10', STL-11000XM,
Paramount ME

Rick
--
Prefix is correct. Domain is arvig dot net

Amazing detail Rick. Your image looks very sharp, must have had good seeing.
I have it marked with a "++" in my list, although I just found that I have
luminance from 2010 and colour from 2012.
I'd need a lot more data to get anything like your image though.

Stefan

"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...

NGC 5448 is an interesting spiral in the southeast corner of Ursa Major.
Redshift puts it 100 million light-years distant though Tully Fisher
measurements average out to about 120 million light-years. Rather good
agreement actually. Assuming the 100 million light-year distance it is
about 120,000 light-years in diameter making it a rather large spiral.
NED classifies it as (R)SAB(r)a with and having an AGN (Active Galactic
Nucleus). The NGC Project disagrees say simply it is SBb. It has a
faint outer disk beyond a bright ring like feature created by its spiral
arms that nearly overlap. To my eye the outer disk appears warped.
That may be an illusion. It was much stronger in the FITS files than
when processed with color added. No papers on it that I found mentions
any warp so it likely is an illusion I can't shake. It also has some
strange dark lanes across the disk inside the ring on the south side.
Looks like a tot drew them in with a crayon.

There are some rather interesting truly distorted galaxies in the image
that I didn't realize were there until I started looking around the
field. Southeast of NGC 5448 is ASK 401001.0 at 390,000 light-years and
further southeast is ASK 401000.0 also at 390,000 light years. They
both appear "sloshed". That is their cores are well off center. Is
this due to a near collision between these two sometime in the past?
Then north of these two is ASK 401014.0 at 900,000 light-years. It is a
near edge on disk galaxy with an oddly warped disk. The eastern side is
quite curved but the western side is less bent.

My color data was severely hit by thickening clouds. Red was taken when
it was rather clear but the clouds moved in on the first green. It is
very weak. The second green mostly blank. The first blue was weak but
usable with the last blue lost to clouds. I never had a chance to
reshoot it. I mostly recreated the green channel. While I cut down the
red and boosted the blue it resulted in some poor color, especially for
the distant galaxies which tended to look more orange than golden. I
tried to adjust for NGC 5448 and ignored what it did to the distant
galaxies.

There's a lot of fine detail in NGC 5448 I didn't catch due to the
seeing. If I can ever get a night for 0.5" pixels it should really show
some nice features lost to the gunk. With my large backlog of
unprocessed images I should just ignore those like the this and the last
two I've posted. But then most of the spring was this way so I'd wipe
out the backlog with one big delete. So I'm processing anything I can
sort of salvage.

14" LX200R, L=4x10' R=2x10' G=1x10+pseudo green B=1x10', STL-11000XM,
Paramount ME

Rick
--
Prefix is correct. Domain is arvig dot net

Most of 2013 was poor seeing so by comparison this average seeing image
seems like good seeing. It appears "poor" is becoming the new "average"

Rick

On 12/17/2013 4:24 PM, Stefan Lilge wrote:
Amazing detail Rick. Your image looks very sharp, must have had good
seeing.
I have it marked with a "++" in my list, although I just found that I
have luminance from 2010 and colour from 2012.
I'd need a lot more data to get anything like your image though.

Stefan

"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...

NGC 5448 is an interesting spiral in the southeast corner of Ursa Major.
Redshift puts it 100 million light-years distant though Tully Fisher
measurements average out to about 120 million light-years. Rather good
agreement actually. Assuming the 100 million light-year distance it is
about 120,000 light-years in diameter making it a rather large spiral.
NED classifies it as (R)SAB(r)a with and having an AGN (Active Galactic
Nucleus). The NGC Project disagrees say simply it is SBb. It has a
faint outer disk beyond a bright ring like feature created by its spiral
arms that nearly overlap. To my eye the outer disk appears warped.
That may be an illusion. It was much stronger in the FITS files than
when processed with color added. No papers on it that I found mentions
any warp so it likely is an illusion I can't shake. It also has some
strange dark lanes across the disk inside the ring on the south side.
Looks like a tot drew them in with a crayon.

There are some rather interesting truly distorted galaxies in the image
that I didn't realize were there until I started looking around the
field. Southeast of NGC 5448 is ASK 401001.0 at 390,000 light-years and
further southeast is ASK 401000.0 also at 390,000 light years. They
both appear "sloshed". That is their cores are well off center. Is
this due to a near collision between these two sometime in the past?
Then north of these two is ASK 401014.0 at 900,000 light-years. It is a
near edge on disk galaxy with an oddly warped disk. The eastern side is
quite curved but the western side is less bent.

My color data was severely hit by thickening clouds. Red was taken when
it was rather clear but the clouds moved in on the first green. It is
very weak. The second green mostly blank. The first blue was weak but
usable with the last blue lost to clouds. I never had a chance to
reshoot it. I mostly recreated the green channel. While I cut down the
red and boosted the blue it resulted in some poor color, especially for
the distant galaxies which tended to look more orange than golden. I
tried to adjust for NGC 5448 and ignored what it did to the distant
galaxies.

There's a lot of fine detail in NGC 5448 I didn't catch due to the
seeing. If I can ever get a night for 0.5" pixels it should really show
some nice features lost to the gunk. With my large backlog of
unprocessed images I should just ignore those like the this and the last
two I've posted. But then most of the spring was this way so I'd wipe
out the backlog with one big delete. So I'm processing anything I can
sort of salvage.

14" LX200R, L=4x10' R=2x10' G=1x10+pseudo green B=1x10', STL-11000XM,
Paramount ME

Rick


--
Prefix is correct. Domain is arvig dot net