ASTRO: IC 174

IC 174 is a strange elliptical galaxy in Triangulum about 230 million
light-years distant. It has a very strange red dust lane and is quite
irregularly shaped with plumes going in several directions. My 60
minutes of time wasn't enough to show them very well. I took three
times this data but it was so poor it made the image worse rather than
better so wasn't used. Someone with better skies likely can show the
plumes better. I found no reference to the dust lane and only a
understated comment in the UGC saying "Complex center, slightly
asymmetric envelope." That seems to ignore the plumes. I agree the
core region has some interesting structure not normally seen in
elliptical galaxies. In all I'd think this is a likely the result of
one or more rather large galaxies it has consumed. Though I found
nothing in the literature about it. A single non redshift measurement
using the Fundamental Plane system to determine distance comes up with
210 million light-years. Rather good agreement yet the method assumes
the galaxy is quite symmetrical in its mass distribution. Since that
might not be the case here either it means these plumes have little mass
and the vast majority of the galaxy is symmetrical or the method just
got lucky. Probably the former is the case.

Only two other galaxies had any redshift data, both at the top of the
image. They are of similar distance it appears so likely related. The
galaxy I most wanted to know about is KUG 0152+349 south southeast of IC
170. NED classifies it simply as "Spiral". That seems odd as I see no
hint of spiral structure. It seems composed of a faint core with four
bright regions around it. I'd love to see a better image of it but
can't find one. I found no redshift for it. Also near the bottom of
the image is what may be a pair of interacting galaxy. Only the
northern one is even listed in NED. The southern one has a plume to the
southwest and a weak one to the northeast that overlaps the northern
galaxy. I found no information on this pair to help determine if they
are related or not.

One faint asteroid appears in the image of nearly 20th magnitude and
moving rather rapidly. That makes it rather faint in the image. Though
if this had been a typical night this fall for transparency I'd have
missed it entirely.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=6x10', RGB=3x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick
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