AGC 2319 in Cygnus

[Steve Gottlieb]

As Dragan started a thread on a nice quartet of galaxies in Cygnus, I thought I'd mention a little known Abell Galaxy Cluster in western Cygnus -- AGC 2319. This distance class 3 cluster is at a redshift of z = .056 or roughly 742 million light years away. That's not a real challenge, but what makes it particularly pesky is that the galaxies are relatively small and lost in the rich Milky Way field. In fact the dense star fields makes traditional star hopping with a finder chart pretty tough, so most of the galaxies are difficult to identify. The three brightest are CGCG 230-004, 230-007 and 230-009, which have have blue magnitudes in the low 15's and shouldn't be a problem for moderate-size scopes. Beyond these, though, are a slew of PGC and MACs (with 2MASX and high PGC designations) that should keep large scope owners busy for awhile :cool:

Steve Gottlieb

[Steve Gottlieb]

I couldn't exactly figure out how the file upload or in-message image works and my Megastar chart of AGC 2319 converted to a thumbnail -- not very helpful. Perhaps someone else can upload a nice chart.

[Jimi Lowrey]

Here is the DSS image.
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Click to enlarge

There is lots of little fuzzies in this image.

Is CGCG 230-7 the CD galaxy of the cluster?

[Steve Gottlieb]

Thanks for posting the image, Jimi.

CGCG 230-7 is possibly a cD (NED calls it a triple galaxy), though CGCG 230-9 (the galaxy to the northeast) is pretty similar in brightness visually.