Starship Asterisk*

Wikipedia: NGC 55 wrote:(Barred irregular galaxy) NGC 55 and the spiral galaxy NGC 300 have traditionally been identified as members of the Sculptor Group, a nearby group of galaxies in the constellation of the same name. However, recent distance measurements indicate that the two galaxies actually lie in the foreground. It is likely that NGC 55 and NGC 300 form a gravitationally bound pair.

• There's a hold up in the Bronx,
  Brooklyn's broken out in fights.
  There's a traffic jam in Harlem
  That's backed up to Jackson Heights.
  There's a scout troup short a child,
  Kruschev's due at Idlewild
  NGC 55, Where Are You?

bystander wrote: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090812.html

Wikipedia: NGC 55 wrote:(Barred irregular galaxy) NGC 55 and the spiral galaxy NGC 300 have traditionally been identified as members of the Sculptor Group, a nearby group of galaxies in the constellation of the same name. However, recent distance measurements indicate that the two galaxies actually lie in the foreground. It is likely that NGC 55 and NGC 300 form a gravitationally bound pair.

These recent measurements were in 2003. What's the verdict, are they foreground or part of the Sculptor Group?

APOD: 2002 August 21 - Spiral Galaxy NGC 300
APOD: 2002 August 22 - Shell Game in NGC 300
APOD: 2005 August 20 - The Stars of NGC 300

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sculptor_Group wrote:
<<The Sculptor Group is a loose group of galaxies near the south galactic pole. The group is one of the closest groups of galaxies to the Local Group; the distance to the center of the group from the Milky Way is approximately 3.9 Mpc.

The Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) and a few other galaxies form a gravitationally-bound core in the center of this group. A few other galaxies at the periphery may be associated with the group but may not be gravitationally bound. Because most of the galaxies in this group are actually weakly graviationally bound, the group may also be described as a filament.>>

neufer wrote:

• ...
  Kruschev's due at Idlewild
  NGC 55, Where Are You?

bystander wrote:

neufer wrote:

• ...
  Kruschev's due at Idlewild
  NGC 55, Where Are You?

Where's Idlewild? Who's Kruschev? And shouldn't that be 54?

neufer wrote:

bystander wrote:Where's Idlewild? Who's Kruschev? And shouldn't that be 54?

[url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104952/quotes]Judge Chamberlain Haller[/url] (aka [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054528/]Officer Francis Muldoon[/url]) wrote:What is a yute?

bystander wrote:

apodman wrote:Near JFK

You mean like the same place?

apodman wrote:a cousin of Khrushchev

neufer wrote:What do irregular galaxies have to do with "South Hackensack Institute of Technology"?

Jay wrote:Is the NGC 55 image posted to APOD today, a composite made up of a variety of spectral elements and reconstituted to the various colors shown? Or is the image a literal view in the visible light spectrum?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irregular_galaxy wrote:
<<Some galaxies do not have a regular shape, like a spiral or an elliptical galaxy. Those galaxies are known as irregular galaxies. Their shape is uncommon. They do not fall into any of the regular classes of the Hubble sequence, and they are often chaotic in appearance, with neither a nuclear bulge nor any trace of spiral arm structure. Collectively they are thought to make up about a quarter of all galaxies. Most irregular galaxies were once spiral or elliptical galaxies but were deformed by gravitational action. Irregular galaxies also contain abundant amounts of gas and dust.

There are two major Hubble types of irregular galaxies:

* An Irr-I galaxy (Irr I) is an irregular galaxy that features some structure but not enough to place it cleanly into the Hubble sequence. de Vaucouleurs subtypes this into galaxies that have some spiral structure Sm, and those that do not Im.

* An Irr-II galaxy (Irr II) is an irregular galaxy that does not appear to feature any structure that can place it into the Hubble sequence.

A third classification of irregular galaxies are the dwarf irregulars, labelled as dI or dIrrs. This type of galaxy is now thought to be important to understand the overall evolution of galaxies, as they tend to have a low level of metallicity and relatively high levels of gas, and are thought to be similar to the earliest galaxies that populated the Universe. They may represent a local (and therefore more recent) version of the faint blue galaxies known to exist in deep field galaxy surveys.

Some of the irregular galaxies are small spiral galaxies that are being distorted by the gravity of a larger neighbor.

The Magellanic Cloud galaxies were once classified as irregular galaxies, but have since been found to contain barred spiral structures, and have been since re-classified as "SBm", a fourth type of barred spiral galaxy, the barred Magellanic spiral type.>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_Street_Irregulars wrote:
<<The original Baker Street irregulars were a group of fictional characters featured in the Sherlock Holmes stories. They were a group of street urchins who helped Holmes out from time to time. The head of the group was called Wiggins. Holmes paid them a shilling a day (plus expenses), with a guinea prize (worth one pound and one shilling) for a vital clue. They first appeared in Conan Doyle's original Sherlock Holmes story, A Study In Scarlet (1886).

The modern organization

The Baker Street Irregulars is also the name of an organization of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts founded in 1934 by Christopher Morley. Members have included John Stevens Berry, Rex Stout, Banesh Hoffmann, U.S. presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S Truman, actors Douglas Wilmer and Curtis Armstrong and the science fiction and fantasy writers Poul Anderson, Fletcher Pratt, Isaac Asimov and Neil Gaiman. They continue to convene every January in New York City for an annual dinner, which forms part of a weekend of celebration and study involving other Sherlockian groups and individuals as well.>>