Viewing the "Apparition" (UGC 8890 = VV 559)

[Steve Gottlieb]

I ran across this object in Vorontsov-Velyaminov's paper "Nine enigmatic new objects" (Soviet Astronomy Letters, vol. 1, p.23, 1975). He described it as "Four condensations are so arranged as to resemble a cross. The knot at the apex is a double, while the one at the bottom of the cross is elongated and larger than the others. The space between them is filled with bright diffuse radiation. Especially remarkable is the fact that this radiation gives the impression of streamers everywhere directed towards the brighter condensation. The diffuse and amorphous appearances of all the knots indicates that this complex is galactic in nature."

In VV's "Atlas of Interacting Galaxies, II" (1977), he refers to the galaxy as the "Apparition". Sounds pretty interesting! So it was on my observing list for early April when I visited Jimi Lowrey. Here's the SDSS image along with SDSS designations from release 9. By the way, Larry Mitchell assigned a MAC designation to the offset nucleus. What a strange looking galaxy -- looks like it could be a merger.

UGC 8290 = The Apparition.jpg

Much of the detail in the image was visible at the eyepiece of the 48-inch. At 488x, the core appeared moderately bright, elongated 3:2 SW-NE, 0.3'x0.2', fairly high surface brightness. Extending to the northeast is a large, low surface brightness halo, which appeared irregular and knotty. This offset halo increased the overall size of the galaxy to roughly 1.2'x0.8'. On the east end of the halo is a nearly stellar 16-17th mag knot [SDSS J131245.32+225002.1 at 50" ENE of the core]. A second low surface brightness knot is at the northeast tip [SDSS J131244.92+225017.9 at 1.0' NE of the core]. A third very low contrast knot is 40" NE of the core (SDSS J131243.49+225018.1). PGC 1677429 = 2MASX J13124913+2251519 lies 2.6' NE and appeared faint, small, round, 18" diameter.

[Jimi Lowrey]

UGC 8290 "The Apparition" was one of the high lites of Steve's and Howard's observing run in April for me. This is a really strange galaxy. The bright core and knots were awesome.

[Howard B]

Here's my sketch and hand written notes from this observation of the Apparition:

UGC8290-The Apparition_crop.jpg

And for those who don't read Midnight Scrawl, here's a translation:

"Now this is flippin' cool - the Apparition looks both like a faint foot print or a ghost. The scene stealer is the little fuzzy at the top of the sketch (which) turns out to be an interacting pair with a tidal tail as seen on a Sloan image that Jimi called up on his laptop. Super cool! 11:25pm, 10mm, 21.54 SQM"

This was indeed one of the greatest sights of our observing run a few weeks ago and is an object I'm really looking forward to trying with my own scope. I've never seen anything quite like it!

[Ivan Maly]

Your sketch, although more detailed, in its main shape reminded me of the visual appearance of VV 539 (UGC 3906) through 1/3 of the aperture:

http://ivm-deep-sky.blogspot.com/201...nd-2011by.html (first sketch on page)

Incidentally, the supernova in my view could be a combined glow with one of what seem to be three very compact knots in the interaction region of the galaxy pair.

The Apparition seems to be a fantastic example of this excellent class of targets (UGC VVs).

PS The UGC number of the Apparition is indeed 8290. Curiously, it is also NGC 5012A.

[Uwe Glahn]

Steve,

I gave the galaxy I try last new moon - very cool object. First I was a little bit confused because of the bright NGC and the non existing galaxy in my finder eyepiece. Than I detected the faint glow and tried to magnify. I could see all three knots, the middle knot was very tough, the both other were brighter and no problem for the 27". The near PGC was also visible, but I could not split it into both parts.

27", 419x, NELM 6m5+, Seeing III
NGC5012A.jpg

[RolandosCY]

Just to make things clear, the correct designation is UGC 8290, right?

[Steve Gottlieb]

Thanks for noticing this typo. The designation for the Apparition should read UGC 8290, not UGC 8890. I was able to correct the title of my original post to reflect the correct UGC number, but I don't see a way to edit the title of the thread.

[RolandosCY]

Thanks Steve! Just on time, as I just started preparing my Megastar charts!