ASTRO: NGC 812 The Rat Tail Galaxy?

NGC 812 is a very asymmetric spiral with no disturbing galaxy in the
field. So how did it get this way? Nothing I found tried to explain
this. It just is this way. It would seem to fit Arp's category for
galaxies with narrow filaments. Or maybe galaxies with a rat-like tail.
I suppose it could be the result of a merger. The core region seems
rather disorganized. This one is pretty alone in the universe and
apparently not studied all that much. NED and the NGC project both
class it as S pec. It is located in Andromeda north of Gamma. It is
thought to be about 225 million light years away.

Only one other galaxy in the image has a redshift value and it is mostly
out of the frame to the south. It is below the orange star near the
bottom right of center. Only its top portion is visible in the full
image. It is CGCG 538-017, an S0/S galaxy also at about 225 million
light years. Looking at it on the POSS 2 plates it doesn't appear
distorted so doubt it had much, if anything, to do with how NGC 812 came
to its present condition. North of it is HFLLZOA F052, a very blue
galaxy classed as dE/N (a dwarf, nucleated elliptical galaxy). There's
not much more on it, not even a magnitude estimate.

The flat S0 galaxy north of NGC 812 is 2MFGC 01633. It shines at
magnitude 12.3 in K band IR light. Far brighter than seen in visible
light of my image as this is about the same total light of the
apparently far brighter NGC 812. To the northwest of NGC 812, two
thirds of the way to a very bright blue star is HFLLZOA F049. It is
tucked between two stars and left of a third, brighter star. This is
the only other galaxy NED lists that isn't in the 2MASS IR catalog.
About 15 others are. The vast majority in the image aren't in any
catalog NED currently carries. The field is well within the "zone of
avoidance" that the Sloan survey tends to avoid so it hasn't, as yet,
covered this part of the sky. The HFLLZOA catalog does list galaxies in
this area as shown by the last three letters of its name. But most in
this field were too faint for this catalog or already included in the
2MASS survey.

The glare oval at the top left of center is due to the 8th magnitude
star, SAO 37778, hitting the edge of the imaging detector.

This is my last 2010 image. On to 2011! Unfortunately, it is now 2012.
I can't seem to catch up no matter how hard work.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick
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