ASTRO: WBL 687: A Triple Galaxy System

WBL 687 is a triple galaxy system in Pegasus a bit over 400 million
light-years from us. Its largest and brightest galaxy is UGC 12193 a
face on, SB(s)bc, barred spiral galaxy with highly detailed arms
considering its extreme distance. If its redshift distance is correct it
is a very large galaxy with a diameter of some 165,000 light-years. Of
course it has to be large to show so much detail at that distance.
North of it is another spiral galaxy, UGC 12191. It is seen at a rather
oblique angle. NED classifies it simply as Sb. Due to its tilt to our
line of sight it appears smaller than UGC 12193 but by my measurements
it is 1.1" larger in angular size. This may be within my error bar but
if correct it is nearly 170,000 light-years across. It's surface
brightness however is much less than UGC 12193 which also tends to make
it seem smaller.

The third member of the group lies to the southeast. It is the much
smaller CGCG 474-032. NED classifies it as simply as a compact spiral.
As I see no arm structure I'd tend to say S0 but NED doesn't see it
that way. It is quite red so appears to be rather dead as to current
star formation with its blue stars having lived their lives and died
with few to take their place. It is quite large for a compact galaxy at
70,000 light-years.

While there are many other galaxies in the image only a very few are
listed at NED, none have redshift data and only one with even a
magnitude, NPM1G +27.0631. That's too bad as I'd like to know more
about this galaxy. It is the one north and a bit east of the WBL 687
group. Its core seems well off center or else what looks like a disk to
the southwest of the bright region is a plume. It appears disturbed to
me. Unfortunately, other than its catalog designation I can't learn
anything about it.

There is a possible 4th and 5th member so this group, UGC 12194 and
12198. They lie some 8 and 13 minutes of arc north of the top of my
field. While not a member of the WBL 687 group they are members of the
PPS2 007 group. They lie some 25,000 light-years further away by
redshift so might not be related. The PPS2 007 group shows 6 members.
I don't know what that 6th one might be. A search in NED failed to turn
up any 6th candidate within 30 arc minutes of PPS2 007's location.

This group was suggested to me several years ago by Sakib Rasool and I
did image it on August 18, 2010. Somehow it then was lost on the hard
drive until a couple days ago. I was moving processed objects to the
finished directory when I decided to sort by age. Everything was
September 2013 or later as expected but this one file dating back to
2010. Somehow I missed putting it on my "to process" list though I did
move it to the "to process" directory where it languished all these
years. How I overlooked it all these years I don't know. It dates back
to my old filters so I had to remember how to fight the nasty blue halos
those created. Also back then I binned my color data more than the
luminance. That just made the halos worse though I didn't realize it at
the time. I've not binned color different than luminance now for
several years.

Fortunately I calibrate the images as they are saved to the hard drive
(I also save the uncalibrated files) so I didn't have to dig into my
backup drives to find matching darks and flats as the calibration was
dead on (not always the case unfortunately). I found a ton of
satellites with at least one per frame, usually more. Those were a
nightmare to process out with too few frames to use data rejection (2
per color). I could use it with 4 luminance frames which helped some
but for some reason the "birds" hit the color frames the hardest. Maybe
that's why it got lost. I put off processing those and then forgot
about it. Each time I find a long lost file like this I'm pretty sure I
have found them all. but they keep turning up. The previous image was
another lost file but lost only by a couple weeks not well over 3 years
and had been processed, just not researched or moved to the processed
directory for posting.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10'x2 RGB=2x10x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Main image is at 1" per pixel, cropped image at 0.8" per pixel.

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

Mighty image Rick.
The galaxies are incredibly sharp, must have had good seeing that night.

Stefan


"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...

WBL 687 is a triple galaxy system in Pegasus a bit over 400 million
light-years from us. Its largest and brightest galaxy is UGC 12193 a
face on, SB(s)bc, barred spiral galaxy with highly detailed arms
considering its extreme distance. If its redshift distance is correct it
is a very large galaxy with a diameter of some 165,000 light-years. Of
course it has to be large to show so much detail at that distance.
North of it is another spiral galaxy, UGC 12191. It is seen at a rather
oblique angle. NED classifies it simply as Sb. Due to its tilt to our
line of sight it appears smaller than UGC 12193 but by my measurements
it is 1.1" larger in angular size. This may be within my error bar but
if correct it is nearly 170,000 light-years across. It's surface
brightness however is much less than UGC 12193 which also tends to make
it seem smaller.

The third member of the group lies to the southeast. It is the much
smaller CGCG 474-032. NED classifies it as simply as a compact spiral.
As I see no arm structure I'd tend to say S0 but NED doesn't see it
that way. It is quite red so appears to be rather dead as to current
star formation with its blue stars having lived their lives and died
with few to take their place. It is quite large for a compact galaxy at
70,000 light-years.

While there are many other galaxies in the image only a very few are
listed at NED, none have redshift data and only one with even a
magnitude, NPM1G +27.0631. That's too bad as I'd like to know more
about this galaxy. It is the one north and a bit east of the WBL 687
group. Its core seems well off center or else what looks like a disk to
the southwest of the bright region is a plume. It appears disturbed to
me. Unfortunately, other than its catalog designation I can't learn
anything about it.

There is a possible 4th and 5th member so this group, UGC 12194 and
12198. They lie some 8 and 13 minutes of arc north of the top of my
field. While not a member of the WBL 687 group they are members of the
PPS2 007 group. They lie some 25,000 light-years further away by
redshift so might not be related. The PPS2 007 group shows 6 members.
I don't know what that 6th one might be. A search in NED failed to turn
up any 6th candidate within 30 arc minutes of PPS2 007's location.

This group was suggested to me several years ago by Sakib Rasool and I
did image it on August 18, 2010. Somehow it then was lost on the hard
drive until a couple days ago. I was moving processed objects to the
finished directory when I decided to sort by age. Everything was
September 2013 or later as expected but this one file dating back to
2010. Somehow I missed putting it on my "to process" list though I did
move it to the "to process" directory where it languished all these
years. How I overlooked it all these years I don't know. It dates back
to my old filters so I had to remember how to fight the nasty blue halos
those created. Also back then I binned my color data more than the
luminance. That just made the halos worse though I didn't realize it at
the time. I've not binned color different than luminance now for
several years.

Fortunately I calibrate the images as they are saved to the hard drive
(I also save the uncalibrated files) so I didn't have to dig into my
backup drives to find matching darks and flats as the calibration was
dead on (not always the case unfortunately). I found a ton of
satellites with at least one per frame, usually more. Those were a
nightmare to process out with too few frames to use data rejection (2
per color). I could use it with 4 luminance frames which helped some
but for some reason the "birds" hit the color frames the hardest. Maybe
that's why it got lost. I put off processing those and then forgot
about it. Each time I find a long lost file like this I'm pretty sure I
have found them all. but they keep turning up. The previous image was
another lost file but lost only by a couple weeks not well over 3 years
and had been processed, just not researched or moved to the processed
directory for posting.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10'x2 RGB=2x10x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Main image is at 1" per pixel, cropped image at 0.8" per pixel.

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

That's my seeing three years ago. Since then its gone severely down
hill as the jet stream not sits over me. It used to go south of me many
nights. I guess I have to wait for climate change to move it even
further north.

Rick

On 4/8/2014 3:06 PM, Stefan Lilge wrote:
Mighty image Rick.
The galaxies are incredibly sharp, must have had good seeing that night.

Stefan


"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...

WBL 687 is a triple galaxy system in Pegasus a bit over 400 million
light-years from us. Its largest and brightest galaxy is UGC 12193 a
face on, SB(s)bc, barred spiral galaxy with highly detailed arms
considering its extreme distance. If its redshift distance is correct it
is a very large galaxy with a diameter of some 165,000 light-years. Of
course it has to be large to show so much detail at that distance.
North of it is another spiral galaxy, UGC 12191. It is seen at a rather
oblique angle. NED classifies it simply as Sb. Due to its tilt to our
line of sight it appears smaller than UGC 12193 but by my measurements
it is 1.1" larger in angular size. This may be within my error bar but
if correct it is nearly 170,000 light-years across. It's surface
brightness however is much less than UGC 12193 which also tends to make
it seem smaller.

The third member of the group lies to the southeast. It is the much
smaller CGCG 474-032. NED classifies it as simply as a compact spiral.
As I see no arm structure I'd tend to say S0 but NED doesn't see it
that way. It is quite red so appears to be rather dead as to current
star formation with its blue stars having lived their lives and died
with few to take their place. It is quite large for a compact galaxy at
70,000 light-years.

While there are many other galaxies in the image only a very few are
listed at NED, none have redshift data and only one with even a
magnitude, NPM1G +27.0631. That's too bad as I'd like to know more
about this galaxy. It is the one north and a bit east of the WBL 687
group. Its core seems well off center or else what looks like a disk to
the southwest of the bright region is a plume. It appears disturbed to
me. Unfortunately, other than its catalog designation I can't learn
anything about it.

There is a possible 4th and 5th member so this group, UGC 12194 and
12198. They lie some 8 and 13 minutes of arc north of the top of my
field. While not a member of the WBL 687 group they are members of the
PPS2 007 group. They lie some 25,000 light-years further away by
redshift so might not be related. The PPS2 007 group shows 6 members.
I don't know what that 6th one might be. A search in NED failed to turn
up any 6th candidate within 30 arc minutes of PPS2 007's location.

This group was suggested to me several years ago by Sakib Rasool and I
did image it on August 18, 2010. Somehow it then was lost on the hard
drive until a couple days ago. I was moving processed objects to the
finished directory when I decided to sort by age. Everything was
September 2013 or later as expected but this one file dating back to
2010. Somehow I missed putting it on my "to process" list though I did
move it to the "to process" directory where it languished all these
years. How I overlooked it all these years I don't know. It dates back
to my old filters so I had to remember how to fight the nasty blue halos
those created. Also back then I binned my color data more than the
luminance. That just made the halos worse though I didn't realize it at
the time. I've not binned color different than luminance now for
several years.

Fortunately I calibrate the images as they are saved to the hard drive
(I also save the uncalibrated files) so I didn't have to dig into my
backup drives to find matching darks and flats as the calibration was
dead on (not always the case unfortunately). I found a ton of
satellites with at least one per frame, usually more. Those were a
nightmare to process out with too few frames to use data rejection (2
per color). I could use it with 4 luminance frames which helped some
but for some reason the "birds" hit the color frames the hardest. Maybe
that's why it got lost. I put off processing those and then forgot
about it. Each time I find a long lost file like this I'm pretty sure I
have found them all. but they keep turning up. The previous image was
another lost file but lost only by a couple weeks not well over 3 years
and had been processed, just not researched or moved to the processed
directory for posting.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10'x2 RGB=2x10x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Main image is at 1" per pixel, cropped image at 0.8" per pixel.

Rick


--
Prefix is correct. Domain is arvig dot net