In A Galaxy, Very, Very Far Away...

Just, beyond a galaxy - far, far away....lie, two other galaxies, in a galaxy group that, the three - have all to themselves. The little group is called the "Leo Triplet" but it is actually likely part of a larger group of galaxies called the "Leo-I" ('Leo One') group.

Moreover, like most things 'cosmological', the connections don't end there: gas-streamer bridges connecting one galaxy or group of galaxies to another group - ultimately, ending in "super-clusters"; i.e., a cluster of clusters of galaxies - the largest, single structures in the universe!

The proximity of the Leo Triplet puts it roughly between our own "Local Group" of galaxies and the Leo-I group; "galaxy-group neighbors", so to speak - or numerically: only, around 30-35mly (million light-years) distant. How far away is that? Well, about 300 times the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy, which is ~120kly (~120,000ly), across.

The "Leo Triplet" consists of galaxies NGC 3628 (left), M65 (upper right), and M66 (lower right). Image provided by the author using Insight Observatory's 16" f/3.7 astrograph reflector, ATEO-1.

  
This tiny distant galaxy group features two spiral galaxies M-65 and M-66 discovered by French amateur astronomer Charles Messier; a comet-hunter by avocation. He tallied a list of small, dim objects in the night sky that appeared to be comets but he soon found we were not as they didn't move from their positions over long periods of time. They were permanent entities. He kept this list only to avoid these objects in future comet searches which he performed in the years around 1773.

The third galaxy, NGC-3628, another spiral saw edge-on; that is inclined 90° from our galactic perspective was discovered by German sister, and brother amateur astronomers William and Caroline Herschel back in the middle 1800s.

M-65, is a 'barless spiral, at 35mly. It is slightly warped, and, there has been some recent star birth activity in one of its gaseous H-II regions.

Of the three M-66 is closest at 31mly with a diameter of about 95kly. It is the brightest of the three but it is missing a large portion of one of its spiral arms. The missing mass from that arm was gravitationally removed by one or both of the other galaxies in the trio.

M-66, has a weak bar feature, extending from its core, and in this way is reminiscent of our own barred-spiral galaxy, the Milky Way. As of 2018 five supernovae have been observed in M-66: SN-2016cok, 2009hd, 1997bs, SN-1989B, and 1973R. SN-1989B was discovered independently by amateur astronomers Mike Petrasko and Dale Alan Bryant - one, cold, still morning in Feb of that same year.

Lastly, NGC-3628, the edge-on galaxy in this trio is also known as the "hamburger" galaxy. (Yes - it does indeed look like a "quarter-pounder" - viewed from the side!) Its disk spans 90tly and sits at 35mly away. The galaxy is composed mostly of older stars and like the other two is easily visible in amateur-class telescopes (4+ inches of aperture diameter). NGC-3628 also sports a 300tly-long, 'tidal tail', connecting the other two galaxies. It is the most distant of the three at 35mly. Its disk is around 100tly across.

Since there has been so much supernovae activity within at least one of the galaxies in this trio, I've decided it would be a good idea to begin an extra-galactic supernova search program using these three 'island universes.

So, here's the plan: take images of the three galaxies all within a single frame at some periodic interval (time series). Using an image of the three together that is known to be "supernova-free" - I can then compare subsequent images over time to the SN-free frame using a sort of 'blink comparator.

A blink-comparator is a device that was used frequently by astronomers to compare images of the same area of sky or objects within the same field of view of a telescope or camera over a specified interval. It involves the rapid sequencing back-and-forth of two images - one against the other. (In the distant, remote, ancient past - (*chuckle*: 1980's), I used two Kodak carousel slide projectors one stacked on the other projecting both slides at the same time onto a screen and then using a sheet of cardboard manually to alternately project the slide images one at a time in rapid succession onto the screen.

Currently, I'll use the two images in an animated, ".GIF", file, and "blink" them, that way. In this fashion, I can set the "blink" rate, and interval, for optimal comparison. In this way, any deviation from the standard field (used as a sort of, 'control group'), such as a blinking spot, line, or another anomaly, will stand out as extraneous data. This was how, Dr. Clyde W. Tombaugh, discovered the dwarf planet Pluto back in 1930. I'll be looking for any supernova activity within the three galaxies.

This is something that anyone using one of Insight Observatory's, remote telescopes can do on their own! It's a good way to involve oneself self in a Citizen Science project - of their own design!

I'll let you know if I find any action! -- you let me know what you find too!!

Dale Alan Bryant
Senior Contributing Science Writer

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M81 and M82 - "The Odd Couple"

Think of the perfect example of a "well-behaved", spiral galaxy, and M81 comes to mind, as, utter perfection. In the opposite direction, think of a galactic, "wild and crazy guy" - and it's M82. Now think of them, as a pair. Talk about an "Odd Couple"!

We are extremely fortunate to have this pair, as nearby as they are, at roughly, 12 light-years. The two, are members of the Ursa Major galactic cluster - a knot, in the Virgo Super-cluster of galaxies, as is our own, "Local Group", of galaxies.

M81, Bode's Galaxy (left), and M82, The Cigar Galaxy (right) in Ursa Major imaged on ATEO-1, the 16" f/3.7 astrograph reflector. Image data were acquired by Muir Evenden and processed by Utkarsh Mishra.

M81 and M82, are among the finest targets for the amateur astronomer with, even, a medium-sized telescope (6"-12"), their magnitude being, approximately, 7th, and 9th, respectively. But they can be detected in smaller scopes, and even, in a good pair of binoculars*, under good sky transparency conditions.

Let's separate the pair out for some analyses:

M81 is a type Sa spiral galaxy. It's, well - perfect. So much so, that it shares the distinctive title of, relatively few galaxies, as a "Grand Design Spiral". Now, that's something to boast about. And I do!

At a diameter of 90,000 light-years, and a distance of 12 million light-years, its relatively large size, and brightness, make it a "stunning" find in the eyepiece. In medium-sized scopes (12+"), the uniformity of its, "oh!-so-homogenous" spiral-arm structure, is notable.

And then, there was M82...

Well; if ever a galaxy looked like it was exploding - M82 - is it. In fact, for a very long time, that's just what astronomers thought was happening. However, there's a little more to it: what's really going on there, is, a massive outburst of star formation - to the point, that, in a sense it is "exploding" - with new stars! Our, Milky Way galaxy (BTW: a barred spiral, or, Sb-type), has a stellar generation rate of about 3, new stars, per year. M81's rate of star formation is something like 33 times that, of ours! (Whew!)

Because of the intense gravitational interaction between M81 and M82 - as well as, nearby, Ursa Major group member, NGC3077 - a small, disrupted, elliptical galaxy - both, M82 and NGC3077 are undergoing, intense, star formation periods in a very short span of time, as galaxies go. Tidal, and other, interruptions are causing large volumes of gases between the three galaxies, to fall inward, toward the cores of M82 and NGC3077. (M81 is, seemingly, immune to this sort of thing, of course!) But, all, three galaxies, are enveloped within interactive streams of gases. Both, M81 and M82, have hosted fairly recent supernovae activity; SN1993-J, in 1993 in M81 - and, SN2014-J, in 2014 in M82.

* Some, experienced, advanced amateurs have been able to detect both of these galaxies, under extremely good transparency conditions using only the unaided eye!

Dale Alan Bryant
Senior Contributing Science Writer

24 hours of Luminance, Red, Green, and Blue image data of M81 and M82 are available for download from Insight Observatory's deep-sky image repository, Starbase. 

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Southern Galaxies Now In Starbase

There are new image sets available on Insight Observatory's Starbase for downloading! Franck Jobard co-owner of Deep-Sky Chile and Insight Observatory's affiliate remote telescope, ATEO-3 captured around 8 hours of luminance image data of galaxies NGC 1365 and NGC 1316-17-18 located in the southern constellation, Fornax. The image data was acquired in November and December of 2019. ATEO-3 is a 12.5" f/9 Quasar Ritchey Chretien, that is available for image requests on our Educational and Public Image Request forms as well as image sets for subscribing to in Starbase. Between gathering data for Insight Observatory's educational programs, Franck is currently in the process of capturing many hours of red, green, and blue image data through the 12" RC. This data combined will make for excellent color image processing of the galaxies.

NGC 1365 imaged on ATEO-3, 12.5" f/9 Quasar Ritchey Chretien - 8 hours of image data acquired by Franck Jobard and processed by Utkarsh Mishra.

NGC 1365 is a barred spiral galaxy in the Fornax cluster. Within the larger long bar stretching across the center of the galaxy appears to be a smaller bar that comprises the core, with an apparent size of about 50″ × 40″. This second bar is more prominent in infrared images of the central region of the galaxy, and likely arises from a combination of dynamical instabilities of stellar orbits in the region, along with gravity, density waves, and the overall rotation of the disc. The inner bar structure likely rotates as a whole more rapidly than the larger long bar, creating the diagonal shape seen in images.

NGC 1316-17-18 imaged on ATEO-3, 12.5" f/9 Quasar Ritchey Chretien - 8 hours of image data acquired by Franck Jobard and processed by Utkarsh Mishra.

NGC 1316 is a lenticular galaxy about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Fornax It is a radio galaxy and at 1400 MHz is the fourth-brightest radio source in the sky.

NGC 1317 (also known as NGC 1318) is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Fornax, in the Fornax cluster. It was discovered by Julius Schmidt on January 19, 1865. It appears to be interacting with much larger NGC 1316, but the uncertainty of distance and scales of tidal distortions make this uncertain.

Source: Wikipedia NGC 1365 and NGC 1316-17-18.

ATEO-3 Starbase Image Set Subscriptions:

• Standard: $0.20 per minute of image set exposure time
• Education: $0.17 per minute of image set exposure time

To learn more about Insight Observatory's Starbase CLICK HERE. To access Starbase, please log in or signup here.

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Home Is Where the Converged Galactic Core Is

Arcturus is the bright, reddish star that can be seen during the summer months, currently, at an altitude of about 40° (or, about 4 fist-widths) from the western horizon at sunset, and from about sunset until around 2:00am, when it sets below the western horizon.

Arcturus is the brightest star in the constellation, Bootes - the 'herdsman'; the brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, and the fourth brightest star in the skies of Earth. Its name comes from the ancient Greek, meaning, "Guardian of the Bear"; Arcturus appears to be trailing the constellations, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor (the 'Great Bear', and the 'Little Bear', respectively). It can easily be located by following the arc of the handle of the Big Dipper, just out into the nearby, celestial blackness - just remember: "Arc, to Arcturus"; and, there Arcturus sits, alone.

This 'red-giant' star, is about the same mass as our Sun, but it is nearly 200 times more luminous. This is because of its enormous size, with a diameter of 22,000,000 miles. Our Sun, "Sol", currently, has an average diameter of 864,000 miles, making Arcturus nearly 26 times the size of the sun, but - it is also 217,000,000,000,000 (217 trillion) miles from Earth, or about 37 light-years distant, accounting for its apparent, relative diminution to our sun. Arcturus is nearly twice as old as our Sol, at around 7.1 billion years.

Red giant stars are stars that are in the later stages of stellar evolution: briefly, they have exhausted their supply of the fuel that sustains them at their cores - Hydrogen. They are still consuming the remaining H in their outermost, gaseous shells by thermonuclear fusion, but have lost so much of their original mass that their surface temperature drops, significantly, and they become so, "swollen", that their remaining 'bulk' is gradually extended into the surrounding space. One day, about 4.5 billion years from now, our own Sun, currently a yellow-dwarf star on the Main Sequence Diagram of Stellar Evolution (also called the Hertzprung-Russell Diagram), will begin its final journey through the red giant phase, as its own nuclear furnace starts to cool down, to begin the journey to its final state - a tiny, hot star, known as a white dwarf.

Though Arcturus is 37 light-years away from our Solar system, its relatively feeble light output was used as a switch, to turn on the lights at the Chicago World's Fair, in 1933, by converting that radiation, using a photoelectric-effect process, combined with a telescope, into electrical signals and, thereby, 'tripping the switch that turned on the lights at that fair! Though this trick could have been accomplished using almost any other sufficiently bright star, Arcturus was chosen, for the fact that its light takes almost 40 years to travel the distance to Earth, through space, and, the last time that the World's Fair was held in Chicago, was 40 years prior.

One of the more interesting things to me about Arcturus is that, though it is one of the many, more familiar stars of our Milky Way galaxy - it is not, originally, from 'here'; it is, literally, an 'alien' star -- from another galaxy! Now - hold on, let's not let our imaginations get the best of us here...

But, how do we know, that, our old pal, Arcturus is actually a 'rogue visitor', from some other, far-off galaxy?

It's because Arcturus orbits our Milky Way galaxy at an oblique angle, almost exactly perpendicular to the plane of rotation of most of the other stars of the galaxy. This means that it doesn't carry the same angular momentum or velocity (speed and direction) as the majority of stars, native to the Milky Way. And, there's more. Lots more.

Our galaxy - a fairly typical, barred-spiral galaxy is, actually, an aggregate of a small "collection" of once, separate, individual galaxies!

You see, galaxies move through the universe in clusters, which are gravitationally bound to a common center of gravity, created by an original mass - say, a hypothetical, binary galactic pair.

Since all matter in the universe is gravitationally attracted to all other matter, the original, revolving pair, would soon have given in to the increasing 'force' of gravity generated by the pairs' decaying orbits, and, eventually collapsed together to form what we currently know as the Milky Way galaxy. (There may be other ways for stars to wind up as 'intergalactic rogues', such as, by gravitational sling-shot-ing, but it doesn't seem to be the case, here). But each galaxy of the original, binary pair would have possessed its own, specific inertia, as well as, specific mass, and a specific plane of rotation, bisected by a specific axis of rotation.

During the merger, most of the stars from both member galaxies would, over time, have assumed a common motion about the now-merged, galactic cores. But some stars, being farther away into the outer periphery of either galaxy, would have strayed, slightly, due to the effects of the differences of the combined angular momentums of the pair, and assumed their own orbits about the galactic core - as did Arcturus - along with 50 other known, stray stellar masses! These 51 stars are known as the "Arcturus Stream".  Other such streams are thought to exist, but these are so distant, relative to the Arcturus Stream, that they remain undetected.

Nevertheless, our Milky Way galaxy - our 'home' galaxy - has adopted these intergalactic wanderers as its own, which, is just as it should be, in my opinion, and I'm O.K. with Arcturus (much like, myself, in a way), as one of good ol' Sol's, 'intra'-galactic, adopted brothers!

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Observing the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy

As I may have mentioned in my previous posts, I have always enjoyed deep-sky observing with my telescopes. My favorite type of deep-sky object to observe is galaxies. I especially enjoy barred spiral galaxies due to their unique characteristics. Many of the observable galaxies with backyard telescopes are designated as "Faint Fuzzies" due to their low magnitudes and lack of characteristics through smaller telescopes. However, there are many galaxies that are observable with smaller backyard telescopes that have many distinct characteristics an observer is able to enjoy. For example... M51, "The Whirlpool Galaxy" in Canes Venatici, M31 - "The Andromeda Galaxy" in Andromeda, and M104 - "The Sombrero Galaxy" located in Virgo is to name a few that are visible in the northern hemisphere with smaller backyard telescopes.

NGC 1365 - The "Great Barred Spiral Galaxy" Imaged by Insight Observatory.

When I started flipping through the pages of the January 2016 issue of "Sky and Telescope" magazine, I almost immediately opened the publication to the article "The Definitive Barred Spiral - NGC 1365" in the "Observing: Going Deep" section by Howard Banich. Banich's article is well written and describes several of his observations of this island universe in great detail with quotes from his observing log as well as detailed sketches of NGC 1365 he recorded using different-sized telescopes and magnifications. Banich observed the galaxy utilizing a telescope with mirror sizes from 8" up to 28" over the span of a few years. The drawings and photographs of the barred spiral in the article gave me the inspiration to observe the galaxy myself. One problem... The galaxy can only be seen in the southern hemisphere.

NGC 1365, also known as the "Great Barred Spiral Galaxy", is located in the constellation Fornax. After reading Banich's article, I logged onto the remote robotic telescope network we use here at Insight Observatory and was able to acquire a 10-minute exposure of the galaxy using a one-shot color CCD camera (inserted in this article). I guess the point of this blog entry is to continue stressing the value of having access to remote robotic telescopes around the globe. I may not be able to visually observe this interesting deep-sky object due to my physical location here in the northeastern area of the United States, however, I was able to capture an image immediately from my desktop computer that I could process and study the fine characteristics this object has to offer.

Some Interesting Facts About NGC 1365:

NGC 1365, also known as the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, is a barred spiral galaxy about 56 million light-years away in the constellation Fornax.

A very bright supernova was discovered by Alain Klotz with the TAROT telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile on October 27, 2012, in NGC 136. The supernova was designated 2012fr.

NGC1365 is a giant Seyfert-type galaxy with a diameter of 200,000 light-years. It is arguably the most prominent barred spiral in the sky.

The bar rotates clockwise with velocities in the nucleus of 2000 km/sec resulting in one rotation in 350 million years.

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