I first came across the field because of the astonishing picture of Peter with a 5-inch Apo. It shows the nice Galaxy Chain NGC 2633/2634/2634A behind faint IFN nebula. The question for me was - are the faint nebula visible and how does the Chain look like?
But let's start at the beginning. Both brighter NGC were discovered by Wilhelm Tempel in 1882 with his 11-inch refractor at Arcetri Observatory, Florence. As often not without some discrepancy. The "lost/not found" NGC 2630/2631 are suspected to be a double observation of NGC 2634/2634A.
Physically, both, or all three galaxies lies around 100 MLj but seems to show no gravitational bounding as tidal tails or peculiar morphology.
NGC 2633 is cataloged as Arp 80 and shows a bright bar with two brighter and wide wounded arms. The galaxy belongs to the group of starburst galaxies. Pictures show structured arms.
NGC 2634 itself shows faint shells which are recent discoveries from 2000 [2000AAS...196.2909K].
But now to my questions. First to the chain. After observing and sketching NGC 2633 a few years ago, lower magnifications shows all three galaxies with direct vision. Averted vision shows a fourth galaxy between NGC 2633 and NGC 2634. In a row of 12' length the chain is a beauty. All four shows different morphology. Although low magnification the spiral structure of NGC 2633 is clearly visible and the shell structure of NGC 2634 is clearly indicated.
But what about the faint IFN (Integrated Flux Nebula) in front of the chain? To my big surprise most of the structures are definitely visible without bigger problems. The main parts do easily fit into the searching eyepieces of normal (larger) telescopes. You don't need to have an extra short focal length like the amazing <f/3 telescopes of Mel Bartels. I unfortunately found no entry in SIMBAD as maybe Molecular Clouds or something.
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