OR (3/16/26): A few unusual targets

[Steve Gottlieb]

Muriel has already posted an OR with SeeStar images from Monday, March 16th, in Glenn County with several winter and spring targets. I was observing with my 24” f/3.8 Starstructure and although the seeing was soft, the skies were clear and dark with an SQM reading of 21.6. I logged a total of 25 objects, mostly at 327x, but here are just a few of special interest.

UGC 4211 (closest known dual actively-feeding supermassive black holes)

08 04 46.4  +10 46 36; Cancer
V = 14.0;  Size 1.2'x0.6';  PA = 30°

UGC 4211 is a late-stage galaxy merger with two extremely close nuclei separated by only 0.32 arcseconds!  At the distance of the galaxy (about 500 million light-years), this corresponds with a physical separation of 750 light years.  In 2023, a multi-wavelength survey using HST, VLT, and Keck spectroscopy at the Atlacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), showed that both nuclei are powered by actively accreting supermassive black holes (SMBH) with masses of over 100 million Suns.  This makes UGC 4211 the closest-separation dual active galactic nuclei (AGN) known, with a separation of just 6 times the black holes spheres of influence.  When the SMBH merge, they should trigger gravitational waves, though the event won’t occur for a few hundred million years.  You can read more about UGC 4211 at https://www.sci.news/astronomy/ugc-4211-binary-supermassive-black-hole-11559.html.

In my 24”, UGC 4211 was easily seen as an elongated 2:1 glow oriented NE to SW, less than 1’ in diameter, with a bright core. A faint 15th magnitude star is at the W edge.




Ton 951 = PG 0844+349 (a low-luminosity quasar 850 million light-years away)

08 47 42.5  +34 45 04; Lynx

V = 14.3-14.8;  Size 0.45'x0.32'

Here’s a designation you may not have seen before. Ton 951 was identified in 1959 as a blue/violet star in the Tonantzintla Blue Stellar Object Survey (TON) by Mexican astronomer Enrique Chavira. The survey searched for blue stellar objects as quasar candidates. The alternate designation PG 0844+349 is from the Palomar-Green Survey of stellar objects with ultraviolet excesss and it was subsequently identified as a quasar in the 1983 Palomar Bright Quasar Survey by Maarten Schmidt and Richard Green. Spectroscopic investigations revealed a Seyfert 1 spectrum, which led to the quasar classification.

Technically, PG 0844+349 isn’t intrinsically luminous enough to be considered a quasar today, but it hosts a Seyfert 1 active galactic nucleus (AGN) with a 21 million solar mass black hole.  The galaxy lies at a distance of about 850 million light-years. Although the host galaxy wasn’t noticed in the original discovery surveys, it is clearly visible today on deeper images as a disturbed face-on spiral galaxy about 20” across (dominated by its bright nucleus). A companion galaxy, PGC 2053896, is 30" SSW. Both galaxies show clear signs of interaction, including tidal arms.

At 326x, it was immediately identified in my 24” as a 14.5 magnitude “star”. The location was easy to pin down 11.5' NW of STF 1272, a 19" pair of 8th and 10th magnitude stars. It often had a "soft" appearance and when the seeing was best, it clearly showed a very small halo (the host galaxy). The companion galaxy wasn’t noticed.

UGC 6076 (a galaxy that should be in the NGC)

11 00 09.6  +45 55 01; UMa
V = 13.7;  Size 0.8'x0.6';  PA = 146°

UGC 6076 is rather ordinary elliptical galaxy, that is “quenched”, meaning it has used up its gas supply as is no longer capable of new star formation.  The UGC designation indicates it was discovered during the three large scale galaxy surveys (MCG, CGCG, and UGC) that are based on the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey in the early 1950s.  

But actually the galaxy was discovered in April 1878 on my birthday (well, a few years before I born) by Ralph Copeland, assistant to the 4th Earl of Rosse. Copeland, who is perhaps best known for the galaxy group “Copeland’s Septet”, was the observing assistant to the 4th Earl of Rosse and he was using the great 72-inch Leviathan.  Unfortunately, he thought that he had observed NGC 3478, which he described as “faint, round, gradually brighter in the middle. A mag 9 star is 2’ to the east in position angle 96.2°.”  The red star in the image below is exactly at Copeland’s position, and it verifies that Copeland had actually discovered UGC 6076, which would be in the NGC if not for his misidentification!  Interestingly, Copeland missed UGC 6075, which is similar in brightness.

Using 327x, UGC 6076 appeared as a fairly faint oval, about 40” x 30”, leaning to the SSE, with a slightly brighter core.  The reddish mag 10.6 star made the identification easy.

[Richard Navarrete]

You look for/at the coolest stuff, Steve. Thanks for sharing your OR.

Richard

Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS

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[Mark Wagner]

Hi Steve - I agree with Richard, great report, interesting objects.  Where do you come up with theses?

[Akarsh Simha]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2026 at 3:42 PM Mark Wagner <itsmar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Steve - I agree with Richard, great report, interesting objects.  Where do you come up with theses?

Steve makes them and puts them in the sky during the day when nobody is watching.

 

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[Mark Wagner]

Comments from a remote observer!  Ya know, I think you may be right.

Looking forward to you returning.

[Akarsh Simha]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2026 at 3:50 PM Mark Wagner <itsmar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Comments from a remote observer!  Ya know, I think you may be right.

Looking forward to you returning.

I was hoping to return for the April new moon, but the flight ticket prices were ridiculous because of the middle-east crisis. Figured I'd rather save that money for a southern hemisphere trip. So apologies for not seeing most of y'all at the spring binge which I wanted to make.

Regards

Akarsh

 

On 3/27/2026 15:46, Akarsh Simha wrote:

Steve makes them and puts them in the sky during the day when nobody is watching.

 

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[Muriel Dulieu Holzer]

Thank you for sharing. There is always something interesting happening in your telescope. I don't think I have seen something violet in space before. 
I am very intrigued by the notion of gravitational waves now. I just gave away a book on the physics of time, maybe I should have kept it.

-Muriel

[Steve Gottlieb]

Thank you for sharing. There is always something interesting happening in your telescope. I don't think I have seen something violet in space before. 

I am very intrigued by the notion of gravitational waves now. I just gave away a book on the physics of time, maybe I should have kept it.

The blue color (sometimes called violet in early studies), I believe, is from gas clouds emitting at 3727 angstroms, which is in the near ultraviolet. In the case of Ton 951, the energy source ionizing these clouds is the hot accretion disc around the supermassive black hole.  Visually, though, the galaxy is much too faint to see any color.

Steve

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[Steve Gottlieb]

Hi Steve - I agree with Richard, great report, interesting objects.  Where do you come up with theses?

That’s the easy part.  Each morning you go to the Astrophysics of Galaxies pre-print server and scan the 2 or 3 dozen new research papers that have been uploaded in the past 24 hours. Then you take notes on new, interesting discoveries that no one else knows about, write down the coordinates (I print finder charts) and put them on your observing list for the next convenient observing session.

Simple  ;-)

Steve

[Mark Wagner]

Thanks for that link, Steve.  Now, I just need to "simply" sort through those articles and determine what's of visual interest, within reach of my biggest telescope.   Easy! ;-)