Galaxy Trio in Cetus

Every once in a while I will see something through the eyepiece that just begs for more investigation. This happened one night in November when I was observing the Herschel objects in Cetus. I came across a field that held three galaxies, NGC 1035, 1042 and 1052. While having three  galaxies in a 1 degree field in a 10" scope does not seem all that unusual, the fact that these three galaxies all looked very different did intrigue me a little and I made a mental note to follow up and learn a little about each of these objects.

My first question was this just a chance alignment or are these galaxies "neighbors." Well to answer this, I went to the  NASA Extragalactic IPAC Data Base. This is a great resource for details on galaxies. In looking at the distances of the three galaxies we see that NGC 1035 and 1052 are 62 and 64 million light years distance while NGC 1042 is a mere 34 million light years away. So it would appear that NGC 1035 and 1052 are somewhat related as their separation is only about 2 million light years. This is similar to the separation between our own Milky Way galaxy and our close neighbor the Andromeda Galaxy.

The database says that NGC 1035 is a SAc normal spiral galaxy. Through the eyepiece, the galaxy appears to us as more edge on than face on.  It has a visual magnitude of 12.2 and is approximately 2 by 4 arc minutes in size. It has an even brightness along its major axis.
You can see from the UKSchmidt photograph to the right that there are beads of higher density stars clusters distributed along the spiral arms. This structure was not visible through the eyepiece at 75X.

NGC 1042 is a face on SABc barred spiral galaxy. It appeared as a soft circular patch in the eyepiece with relatively even brightness. I estimated the dimensions to be 3 by 3 arc minutes. The visible magnitude is 11.0.
The MW_Pal photograph to the left clearly shows the spiral arms and the barred center. These structures were not readily visible through the eyepiece.

NGC 1052 is an elliptical galaxy. Through the eyepiece it is clearly elongated with a hint of a denser central core area.  This is the brightest of the three galaxies with a visual magnitude of 10.5 and I estimated the dimensions at 4 by 2 arc minutes.
The Palomar 200 photo at the right shows little detail of the galaxy. I suppose this somewhat normal of ellipticals as they are relatively homogeneous in stellar density except for the extreme edges where the density falls off rapidly. I believe this is what gives the galaxy the appearance of having an overly large core or halo.

I look forward to revisiting these galaxies next fall to see if any of the structures visible in the photographs are visible with a more concerted effort through the eyepiece.

Clear skies;
rw