Shakhbazian 364 and friends

[Martin Meredith]

During a briefish session last night I came across this field just to the north of the wonderful NGC 80 galaxy group (the two NGCs at the base of this shot belong to that NGC-rich group and since it also contains Arp 65 I'll post in the Arp thread).

This screenshot shows the general field so that the tiny apparent size of some of the objects can be appreciated.

 

My main target was Shakhbazian 364 which is a delicate chain of 5 very faint galaxies whose magnitudes have to be around 18 or lower (there is a 6th member some way off the line to the N). This chain is highly-reminiscent of Hickson 55 in Ursa Major, so much so that I had to check the designation. 

This is a poor shot of Hickson 55 from some time back:

Perhaps the weirdest object in the shot is IC 1542:

I haven't yet been able to dig out any information about what kind of galaxy (or galaxies) this might be but it looks pretty irregular (the only information that might be relevant is from a paper entitled The clustering of dwarf galaxies but there is no explicit mention of IC 1542).  I can't help but see a terrier dog facing to the left with a ball at its feet.

Just to the north of IC 1542 is another chain of three galaxies although these are not listed anywhere that I can find.

All in all a fascinating part of the sky.

Martin

PS Perhaps we need a Shakhbazian thread to gather together observations of these fien objects?

 

[Mike JW]

Hi Martin, As always with the SHKs they have an element of intrigue as so little is known about them.  NED has no magnitude info for two of the chain, the other 3 are mag 18 with one at mag 18.9. To the right of the chain your red circle goes through another galaxy - only info is it is an infra red source. The separate northern member has no information.

The tiny chain you label as anon - two are Infra sources, the third is an ultra violet source. No other info.

IC 1542 - love your description. Like you I cannot find any info other than Spiral? That seems a totally inadequate designation. However NED shows two galaxies and a Ultra violet source at this point. Now this does make some sense because the "mess" would suggest at least two galaxies interacting (NED redshift info is very similar for the two galaxies).

Mike

[Martin Meredith]

Thanks for that information Mike. I must use NED more often as Simbad and pals didn't deliver on this occasion. I will continue looking for the gen on IC 1542 when I get some spare time. I'm rather surprised Arp didn't include this one!

Martin