29 replies to this topic

[SNH]

I have a retraction to make. I erred when I wrote "Bakich erred when he gave the individual identifications to the galaxies that make up Zwicky's Necklace (#43)". Gottlieb pointed out to me a while back that while SIMBAD doesn't have some of the individual galaxy identifications that he used in its database, they are still valid.

 

Interestingly, though, he pointed out to me that Bakich had still made a couple of significant errors with his piece on Zwicky's Necklace. The first was it's not the “388th entry in volume 8 of the Catalogue of Galaxies and of Clusters of Galaxies”. In fact, it doesn’t even appear in the CGCG! It is the 388th entry in the Eighth List of Compact Galaxies, which was published in 1975 after Zwicky passed away (with Sargent and Kowal listed as coauthors).

 

The second problem is when Bakich writes "Zwicky's description, published in a 1975 paper he wrote with Wallace L. W. Sargent and Charles T. Kowal, reads: 'Four red spherical (stellar or fluffy) compacts surrounded by seven additional compacts within circle of 7 minutes of arc. Individual magnitudes from 16.8 to 19.3.'"  Unfortunately, that’s the description for VIII Zw 396, another compact group about 2.6° NNE.

 

So there you go.

 

 

Scott, if you're keeping a tally on errors, Geoffrey Burbidge didn't discover the Integral Sign Galaxy (UGC 3697) in 1967.  It first appeared in Volume 1 of the MCG in 1962 as MCG +12-07-028.  Just a year after Burbidge's paper, the de Vaucouleurs' published some additional notes on the galaxy and corrected this error by noting the earlier discovery.   

 

Vorontsov-Velyaminov (primary author of the MCG) was apparently quite irritated and wrote a note in 1974 titled "Morphological Catalogue of Galaxies Discriminated Against" complaining Burbidge didn't recognize his earlier catalogue entry and renamed the galaxy GB 1 after himself!

 

So here we are 50 years later, and guess what...SIMBAD still lists the primary name as GB 1!

That's quite the story, and it irks me too that it goes by GB 1 in SIMBAD! By the way, I observed it the other night for the first time ever and was surprised to see it's razor-thin body at just 68x in my 16-inch. Thus, it's probably visible in my 10-inch if I care to try. At 300x I could see that its west end passed between two faint stars and seemed to curve upward just a little.

 

Scott H.

[Akarsh Simha]

Scott, if you're keeping a tally on errors, Geoffrey Burbidge didn't discover the Integral Sign Galaxy (UGC 3697) in 1967.  It first appeared in Volume 1 of the MCG in 1962 as MCG +12-07-028.  Just a year after Burbidge's paper, the de Vaucouleurs' published some additional notes on the galaxy and corrected this error by noting the earlier discovery.   

 

Vorontsov-Velyaminov (primary author of the MCG) was apparently quite irritated and wrote a note in 1974 titled "Morphological Catalogue of Galaxies Discriminated Against" complaining Burbidge didn't recognize his earlier catalogue entry and renamed the galaxy GB 1 after himself!

 

So here we are 50 years later, and guess what...SIMBAD still lists the primary name as GB 1!

Very fascinating history! Thanks for sharing, Steve. Science (and even engineering and other branches) are full of such misattributions. There's an adage that "Things are named after the person that discovered them last". One of my very illustrious professors at grad school bore the brunt of that. His work was (allegedly intentionally) "rediscovered" by another man that won the Nobel prize for it. Most of the world says, "Why care? It's a name used to refer to a phenomenon (or an object or an invention or whatever)" or even "I know so-and-so discovered this, but I will still use the common name so everyone understands what I'm talking about." Truth is, it hurts the true inventor / discoverer.

[Akarsh Simha]

I was going through the list of objects that I hadn't seen to learn about them before this new moon's run (with a big telescope). Turns out I've seen 76 of the 101. Many of what's left are either extremely faint to invisible (e.g. Kepler's Supernova), too southern (Bullet Cluster, need a huge telescope too), or stars with interesting dynamics. But there are a few very interesting things that I picked up that I hadn't seen: FU Ori for example (although many of us have looked at Parsamyan 21 another FUor) or PuWe 1 or the Red Spider Nebula, or some to put on my list for my next visit to lower latitudes like NGC 5189 or Boomerang Nebula.

 

The sentence "PG 1634+706 is the most distant object in the universe visible in an amateur telescope" caught my eye. I've however seen Ton 618 in my 18", which is only at 16-something-th magnitude, so it is well within the reach of many amateur telescopes. NED puts Ton 618 at a redshift of z = 2.2 which translates to light travel time of 10.7 Gyr (with the default parameters on Ned Wright's Cosmology Calc). It takes a LOT of work to write a good article without errors* and know every possible object in the night sky that anyone has considered observing, and so I write this with respect to the authors for introducing me to a whole array of deep-sky objects and their backgrounds that I was never aware of. And also, as I posted elsewhere, Necklace PN was visible in my 18".

 

(*How do I check myself if I need to make a claim? I usually ask Steve Gottlieb or Scott Harrington )

Edited by Akarsh Simha, 30 May 2024 - 05:32 AM.

[SNH]

I was going through the list of objects that I hadn't seen to learn about them before this new moon's run (with a big telescope). Turns out I've seen 76 of the 101.

 

Impressive! When I first read the issue six months ago, I had only seen 66 out of 101. I'm just not a big galaxy cluster guy, I guess.

 

Many of what's left are either extremely faint to invisible (e.g. Kepler's Supernova), too southern (Bullet Cluster, need a huge telescope too), or stars with interesting dynamics. But there are a few very interesting things that I picked up that I hadn't seen: FU Ori for example (although many of us have looked at Parsamyan 21 another FUor) or PuWe 1 or the Red Spider Nebula, or some to put on my list for my next visit to lower latitudes like NGC 5189 or Boomerang Nebula.

 

I got Cederblad 59 (FU Ori) RN with my 16-inch in the winter of '22/'23. At 440x there was a definite glow on one side of the star...but no distinct 'arc' as seen in images.

 

The sentence "PG 1634+706 is the most distant object in the universe visible in an amateur telescope" caught my eye.

 

Huh, I guess I overlooked that statement by Alan Goldstein. At least he did add that it "can been seen in a 10- or 12-inch scope under excellent skies."

 

I've however seen Ton 618 in my 18", which is only at 16-something-th magnitude, so it is well within the reach of many amateur telescopes. NED puts Ton 618 at a redshift of z = 2.2 which translates to light travel time of 10.7 Gyr (with the default parameters on Ned Wright's Cosmology Calc).

 

Hehehehe. I have yet to see Ton 618, but I have seen another equally bright quasar in my 10-inch. Known as QSO B1946+770, it's a +15.8-magnitude quasar along the Draco/Cepheus border that SIMBAD gives a redshift of z = 3, which works out to be 11.7 Gyr. So, while Goldstein gave a good one for its distance to brightness ratio, B1946+770 is the next one he could've written about. Interestingly, it sorta goes 3C 273 (+12.8/2.5 Gyr), PG 1634+706 (+14.6/8.6 Gyr), then B1946+770 (+15.8/11.7 Gyr) in my books. And these are single quasars...not lensed doubles.

 

It takes a LOT of work to write a good article without errors* and know every possible object in the night sky that anyone has considered observing, and so I write this with respect to the authors for introducing me to a whole array of deep-sky objects and their backgrounds that I was never aware of. And also, as I posted elsewhere, Necklace PN was visible in my 18".

 

Yeah, it was just a well done issue with a bunch of observations of unique objects!

 

(*How do I check myself if I need to make a claim? I usually ask Steve Gottlieb or Scott Harrington )

 

Well, when Steve Gottlieb goes, it's gonna be 'Olympus Has Fallen' because he's who I turn to!! So, who watches the watcher, then??

 

Scott H.

[Winston6079]

I am surprised to find that at least 5 can be seen in where I am living, they are all bright star cluster (Mel. 20) or stars. Others are hopeless to see

 

Forget to say I am living under the word-class light pollution plus serious air pollution (killing thousands every years) and almost ever-day heavy rain.

 

25 years ago I could see M45 surrounded by nebula as well as M97 with a 4-inch slow (f/10) refractor, I could even see some members of the Virgo galaxy group. The good weather, flesh air, low light pollution, and the promised freedoms, everything became long ago memories...

Edited by Winston6079, 05 June 2024 - 01:06 AM.