NGC 7303 A Shadow ship?

NGC 7303 is a very strange galaxy in northwestern Pegasus about 150
million light-years distant by redshift, 160 million by the median of
Tully Fisher measurements. It is a LINER galaxy so has a very active
nucleus. If the strange shape and all the activity is due to an
interaction it is something it ate as it has no companions in its area
that NED came up with. Though this area is not well represented in any
data base I have. It is very spider or crab looking which reminds me of
a Shadow ship from the Babylon 5 SciFi series. NED lists it as S? while
the NGC project says it is Sbc.

The only other galaxy in the field with redshift distance is the very
open, two arm spiral UGC 12071. It is over a half billion light-years
distant so unrelated to NGC 7303. It's color is strange with sharply
defined reddish areas that change to blue without apparent reason.
Makes the color look splotchy. As there's no hint of color issues any
other place in the image I have to think it really is this way. At
least until I can find skies suitable for retaking the color. Maybe
next year.

The only other NGC listing in the field is for NGC 7304 which is
considered as nonexistent by the NGC project. Even its "discoverer" was
unable to find it again. Some say it is the nearby group of stars but
the NGC project says those are invisible in scopes even larger than that
used to "discover" it in the first place. The UGC says "Reinmuth
identifies NGC 7304 with a star 3' north following this galaxy." That
would likely be the brightest of the stars near the position shown in my
annotated image though NED itself says "Three galactic stars. NGC
identification is very uncertain."

Only 5 other galaxies are noted in NED. All from the 2MASS survey and
none with much information let alone redshift data or magnitude
estimates. I've labeled them in the annotated image for what that is
worth. One looks like a star in my image. It even looks like a star to
me in the Sloan image. NED lists it both as a star and as a galaxy.
Many other galaxies, some interesting looking, are seen in the field but
I was unable to turn up anything on them as interesting as their appearance.

Transparency was poor and I kept trying over and over for usable
luminance frames having grabbed color data on a night of poor seeing but
sort of usable transparency. In all I took some 16 luminance frames.
Three were so poor I threw them out. But by including the rest I got
better results than sorting further. Though if I used the four sharpest
there was more detail in bright areas but fainter regions were totally
lost. Using only the lesser images picked up faint regions but lost the
detail. Best was use them all and miss the finest detail so that's what
you get. This one is so interesting looking it deserves better. Still
for August this is a good image!

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=13x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

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

Rick,

I'll have to put that one on my list, a most peculiar spiral.

Stefan

"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...

NGC 7303 is a very strange galaxy in northwestern Pegasus about 150
million light-years distant by redshift, 160 million by the median of
Tully Fisher measurements. It is a LINER galaxy so has a very active
nucleus. If the strange shape and all the activity is due to an
interaction it is something it ate as it has no companions in its area
that NED came up with. Though this area is not well represented in any
data base I have. It is very spider or crab looking which reminds me of
a Shadow ship from the Babylon 5 SciFi series. NED lists it as S? while
the NGC project says it is Sbc.

The only other galaxy in the field with redshift distance is the very
open, two arm spiral UGC 12071. It is over a half billion light-years
distant so unrelated to NGC 7303. It's color is strange with sharply
defined reddish areas that change to blue without apparent reason.
Makes the color look splotchy. As there's no hint of color issues any
other place in the image I have to think it really is this way. At
least until I can find skies suitable for retaking the color. Maybe
next year.

The only other NGC listing in the field is for NGC 7304 which is
considered as nonexistent by the NGC project. Even its "discoverer" was
unable to find it again. Some say it is the nearby group of stars but
the NGC project says those are invisible in scopes even larger than that
used to "discover" it in the first place. The UGC says "Reinmuth
identifies NGC 7304 with a star 3' north following this galaxy." That
would likely be the brightest of the stars near the position shown in my
annotated image though NED itself says "Three galactic stars. NGC
identification is very uncertain."

Only 5 other galaxies are noted in NED. All from the 2MASS survey and
none with much information let alone redshift data or magnitude
estimates. I've labeled them in the annotated image for what that is
worth. One looks like a star in my image. It even looks like a star to
me in the Sloan image. NED lists it both as a star and as a galaxy.
Many other galaxies, some interesting looking, are seen in the field but
I was unable to turn up anything on them as interesting as their appearance.

Transparency was poor and I kept trying over and over for usable
luminance frames having grabbed color data on a night of poor seeing but
sort of usable transparency. In all I took some 16 luminance frames.
Three were so poor I threw them out. But by including the rest I got
better results than sorting further. Though if I used the four sharpest
there was more detail in bright areas but fainter regions were totally
lost. Using only the lesser images picked up faint regions but lost the
detail. Best was use them all and miss the finest detail so that's what
you get. This one is so interesting looking it deserves better. Still
for August this is a good image!

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=13x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

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