Wednesday, August 30, 2017

imaged Arp 133 (Halifax)

Another clear night in Halifax and the Burke-Gaffney Observatory captured some images for me starting with the region centred on NGC 541 in Cetus. It is also known as Arp 133. SkyTools 3 Professional calls it Minkowski's Object. It is one member in a large galaxy group called ACO 194.

The image quality is poor. A combination of the elevation (37°) and the bright Moon.

galaxy group ACO 194 in luminance

Luminance only, 60 seconds subexposures, 10 stacked shots. FITS Liberator, Paint.NET. North is up; east is left.

NGC 541 is front and centre, aka MCG 0-4-137 and PGC 5305. Again, it is also called Arp 133. It appears a small round fuzzy object.

South-west of 541, I can see a dim fuzzy patch. This is NGC 535 (MCG 0-4-133 and PGC 5282).

A bit further beyond is a very dim oval shape. SkyTools does not identify this as a galaxy instead referring to it as star J012526.8-012628.

Well beyond these two is MCG 0-4-129, a non-round piece of lint.

UGC 996, near star GSC 04682-1494, is a bright but small oval.

South of star TYC 04682-1766 1 is NGC 538, a medium-bright fuzzy.

UGC 1003 aka PGC 5307 is due south of NGC 541.

The bright pair of diffuse balls to the north-east of 541 are NGCs 545 and 547. 547 is south-east. ST3P also calls it Arp 308, MCG 0-4-143, and PGC 5324. 545 is aka Arp 308, MCG 0-4-142, and PGC 5323.

MCG 0-4-139 is close to NGC 541 to the north-north-east. It is very dim.

MCG 0-4-140 is beside the pair of stars. It is very tiny.

Above the stellar pair is NGC 543 (MCG 0-4-138 and PGC 5311).

Wow. Too bad the signal is so poor...

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Acquired much better data on 14 October.

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