Object Of The Week March 12, 2022 - Zwicky's Necklace

[wvreeven]

8 ZW 388, Zwicky's Necklace

Group of Galaxies

Virgo

RA: 14 15 06.786
DEC: -00 29 31.90

Mag: 17.0 and fainter

When Fritz Zwicky died, he left a huge amount of unpublished work. This contained a list of compact galaxies which he discovered after his 1971 Catalog of Compact Galaxies. This new list was published in 1975 as the Eighth List of Compact Galaxies. The list contains 496 entries and this OOTW is about number 388, also known as Zwicky's Necklace.

I came across this tiny, compact group of galaxies in the index of the Interstellarum DeepSky Atlas (IDSA). The atlas was created based on observing reports of many amateurs all over the world using a wide range of apertures. The atlas provides very useful information regarding which telescope it is visible in and, in case of emission nebulae, which filter likely is to work best. Given the faint magnitudes of the galaxies in this group, I am surprised and also excited to see it listed in the IDSA!

zwicky_s-necklace.jpg
SSDS DR15 image of Zwicky's Necklace.

Occasioanlly Simbad gets its IDs wrong, which is the case here as well since Simbad points slightly next to the actual group. See this link. The group is visible to the lower right of the Aladin preview. Using Aladin, all galaxies (and more) in a radius of 42 arcsec around the galaxy LEDA 1142006 (for which the RA and DEC are given at the top of this article) can be found. This totals 15 galaxies of which only 5 have known B and R magnitudes. The list can be seen here.

So, what is visible of this compact group? To be honest, I don't know! This is the first time I post an OOTW article about an object that I haven't actually observed yet myself. I had plans to go for it with my 20" but unfortunately I haven't been to Chile with this region of Virgo in an observable position in the sky since I learned about this group about half a year ago. However, I will go there again later this week and I intend to go and observe with my 20" for two weekends in a row while I am there and I will give this group a try. So I am curious to learn if anyone else has had a look at this group.


As always,

"Give it a go and let us know!
Good luck and great viewing!"