NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 628 48" (10/22/11): beautiful face-on spiral with long, graceful arms wrapping around an intense 1' core that increases towards the center, but there is no sharp nucleus. At first glance at 375x there appeared to be four arms, but with a more careful look there are two main arms that each wrap more than 360¡ around the core as well as a couple of side branches. Each arm is studded with a number of non-stellar HII regions that highlight the arms. In addition, a number of stars are superimposed, both in the inner region (two faint stars are within 25" of the center) and around the edge of the halo, which extends to 7'-8' diameter. The more prominent arm "southern" arm is very regular - emerging from the core on the south side and wrapping counterclockwise around the core to the north, unwinding gradually as it curves to the east and then pulls away from the central region more suddenly on the south side. This arm is very patchy and delineated by a large number of HII knots with the two most prominent ones near the outer southern end. The "northern" arm begins to emerge from north of the core, tightly wraps counterclockwise around the core, passing near or through a few superimposed stars on the south side of the core, unwinding more as it stretches again to the north. The arm structure is a bit more complex on the north side due to side branches and the embedded HII knots are more scattered. The HII regions were viewed more carefully at 610x. The following identifications are from Paul Hodge's 1976 "HII regions in NGC 628" (ApJ, 205, 728), which lists over 700 HII knots. The brightest is #627, near the end of the outer southern arm 2.7' SSW of center. It appeared fairly bright, fairly small, round, ~20" diameter. Moving clockwise along this arm towards the core, the next prominent knot is #598 situated 2.2' SSE of center. It was slightly fainter than #627, round, 15" diameter. Next in line is #552, a faint round knot of 10" situated 1.8' SE of center. East of the core by 1.5' is #406, a very faint, round 10" knot situated 36" S of a superimposed mag 14.5 star. Just 30" W of this star and 1.2' NE of center is #292, a fairly faint, very small knot, ~8" diameter. Continuing inward along this arm, the next knot is #196, a very faint hazy spot 1.3' N of center. Finally, less than 1' NW of center is another very faint patch with multiple Hodge numbers #260-268. There were no notable knots on the inner southern portion of the northern arm, but a noticeable clump of knots is on the NW portion of this arm. First was #167/168, a faint 10" knot 1.6' NW of center. Continuing outward 2.0' NNW of center is a faint, elongated patch, ~25" diameter, consisting of #91-95 and #49 at the north end of the glow. I didn't search the outer region of the halo for additional HII knots, except noted #330, a 10" knot situated between two mag 12-13 stars at the eastern edge of halo, 3.9' from center. 17.5" (8/31/86): bright, large, round, very bright core. A spiral arm is attached at the east side of core winding towards the west along the south side. A dark gap is visible between the arm and the main central portion. Several stars are superimposed in the halo. 13.1" (8/24/84): very prominent, fairly small bright core surrounded by a very large, diffuse glow. Visible in 16x80 finder. 8": very small bright core surrounded by a large faint halo.