Where to register a finding?

[Silverback]

:confused:Hello, my name is Silverback and I am looking for someone in the astronomy field to tell me that I am not seeing things. I think that I have discovered a new spiral galaxy and I need to know who I need to talk to to have this discovery registered? Does anyone know?

[Nowhere Man]

The first thing that comes to mind is the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, (http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/cbat.html) but that's mainly for transient sightings. Otherwise, the IAU (http://www.iau.org/) itself may be of service.

You'll likely need celestial coordinates of the object, as accurate as you can get them, for several nights. If it moves, it's not a galaxy.

Edit to add: If it is a galaxy, more than likely it's already listed in one of the big catalogs of galaxies. People have been looking at the sky for a long time.

Fred

PS. Welcome to BAUT!

[KaiYeves]

Welcome to BAUT, Silverback!

[Kaptain K]

:confused:Hello, my name is Silverback and I am looking for someone in the astronomy field to tell me that I am not seeing things. I think that I have discovered a new spiral galaxy and I need to know who I need to talk to to have this discovery registered? Does anyone know?
1) Welcome to BAUT!
2) Galaxies are not registered, they are cataloged.
3) If you can see it with any scope available a non-professional, it is, in all probability, in one or more catalogs.

4) If you want to hang your name on something, find a comet. They are the only objects that (currently) get named for their discoverers, but you have to be the 1st (by more than 24 hours) to get a solo name (McNaught) or one of the first two (Hale-Bopp) or three (Honda-Mrkos-Padjaskova), all within 24 hours, to get your name on it.

5) If you want to name an object, discover an asteroid. The discoverer gets to name an asteroid subject to approval of the IAU.

[Tim Thompson]

As the Kaptain says, galaxies and the discovery thereof are not registered anywhere. It is highly unlikely that you have actually discovered a previously unknown spiral galaxy. But, if you think you have, here is what you need to do. First, you need really precise coordinates (right ascension (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_ascension) and declination (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declination)) for the galaxy. If you can't do that, there is nothing more you can do, coordinates are an absolute necessity. The more accurate & precise they are, the better. In any case, if you can't get coordinates that are at least as precise as a few arcseconds, then they are not good enough.

Once you have the coordinates, you need to use those coordinates to search the known databases & catalogs to make sure the galaxy is not already listed. I would start with The STScI Digitized Sky Survey (http://stdatu.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/dss_form) and the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Databse (http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/). Search both by coordinates. If your coordinates are not precise enough you will probably find that there are several galaxies listed at the location you specify, and you have to look at the database images to be sure your galaxy is not one of them. There are other catalogs that don't cover the whole sky, but do count millions of galaxies, such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) (http://www.sdss.org/) (see the Data Release 6 (http://www.sdss.org/dr6/) catalog). I don't know what the galaxy count is in the SDSS imaging database, but I know there are 287,000,000 cataloged objects, probably mostly stars. The SDSS spectral catalog includes 790,860 galaxies.

Once you determine that the galaxy you see is not in any catalog, and you are convinced that you have actually discovered a new galaxy, you have to write a letter describing your discovery, its coordinates, and what catalogs you searched to make sure it is not already known. You should have an image of the galaxy, and you will need to describe the telescope you discovered it with. You need to submit the letter you write for publication, probably to either The Astronomical Journal or The Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Whatever you send them, they will probably send it back with suggestions to search more catalogs, and suggestions on how to write a letter in the format they require.

That's the way discoveries like this get "registered". But at least a few hundred million galaxies have been cataloged (the Palomar Sky Survey catalogs 945,592,683 objects and a lot of them are galaxies). And I think I can guarantee that their magnitude limit is deeper than yours, whatever telescope you used. I don't want to discourage you from discovery, but realism is a good habit. Amateur astronomers are well known for discovering comets and occasional asteroids, and supernovae. Most variable star light curves are established by the amateur members of organizations like AAVSO (http://www.aavso.org/). But there is a reason amateurs are not known for discovering new galaxies: The sky has been entirely surveyed & cataloged by large aperture, sensitive telescopes that amateurs can't compete with, and recorded on plates & digital media that amateurs can't afford to duplicate. The SDSS can see down to 22nd magnitude (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude), that's how they manage to catalog 287,000,000 objects over about 25% of the sky. The Digital Sky Survey limit is similar, about 21 for the old survey, and 22 for the newer survey. Anybody who has an all sky catalog that deep, has probably already cataloged any galaxy you can see, and that is especially the case for any galaxy you can see well enough to eyeball the spiral structure.

[Jeff Root]

Silverback,

If what you saw is a galaxy, it would be a good exercise to identify it.
Did you see it more than once? Do you have coordinates? Or do we
need to find it by star hopping?

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis