Telescope Reviews: NGC 4214

Another interesting object I reobserved earlier this year with a larger aperture (with my 16" from Cherry Springs). I am a "big fan" of the Large Magellanic Cloud and enjoy viewing similar galaxies at any distances. This one is a fantastic example structurally and is in relative terms just beyond our local group. There is also what seems to be an unresolved controversy over not the NGC designation in the title of this post, but what other, if any, NGC objects it is identical with.

My journal records (HT is O'Meara's Hidden Treasures list that I like):

May 18. HT 59. NGC 4214=4228. Along the way from Beta CVn, Caldwell 26 (NGC 4244) is stunning, big, grainy. HT 59 = NGC 4214 = 4228: core elongated strongly NW-SE. SW edge curved in, sharp. Appearance caused by two knots SW of each end of the bar. The knots as such are invisible at 225x. Did not go higher. Material fans E.

The sketch from the journal is below. The "fan", this visually almost shocking feature, has a counterpart on DSS. However, it is not connected to the two stubby arms curving from the ends of the bar. These arms remained invisible to me; perhaps a higher magnification would bring them out. The broad fan E of the bar, whose brightest edge is the N one, may be regarded as a certain broad third arm, because the direction of the N edge is the same as of the clearly separated arm further N.

Some further notes I made later:

This is an SABm 11 Mly distant, similar in size (30 kly) to the LMC. I.95, Herschel 400; previously observed June 7, 2010 with the Comet Halley Renaissance, along with the nearby NGC 4244, Herschel’s V.41. The cross-identification of this galaxy as NGC 4228 is repeated throughout O’Meara’s Hidden Treasures book. There he quotes from Larry Mitchell regarding the doubtful identity of William and John Herschel’s discoveries; the passage is unclear. There is no cross-identification in O’Meara’s Herschel 400 Guide. SEDS, however, identifies the Herschel 400 object NGC 4214 (I.95) not with 4228 (a non-W. Herschel object) but with 4208, William Herschel’s II.107, which is otherwise said to be “not documented”. HCNGC gives 4228 as John Herschel’s, at the same position as his father’s 4214 but with non-identical dimensions and visual magnitude. NGC 4208 (II.107) according to HCNGC is an entirely different object. Steinicke identifies William Herschel’s NGC 4214 with John Herschel’s 4228, and 4208 (I.107) with 4212 (I.108), discovered by William on the same night.