complete beginner here, only got into star gazing a few days ago using my friend's telescope and I don't really understand at all what any of the measurements mean.
Anyway, talk about jumping in the deep end, but I'm poking around Nasa's Intergalactic Database, but sadly it's all greek to me: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/
Here's a galaxy: NGC 7590
Here's its basic data:
EquJ2000.0 RA
EquJ2000.0 DEC
Velocity km/s
Redshift / z
Magnitude / Qual Filter
Separ arc min
Now I'm afraid I don't really understand what any of these measurements and their values actually mean.
I remember from school what Red Shift is, its the wavelength increasing becoming 'stretched' making the light seem to appear more reddish the faster an object is accelerating away from us. But what is that z unit?
I'm afraid I really don't have a clue regarding anything else... spear arc min, magnitude / qual filter?
Is there a book for a brief understanding of these units? Not out to solve problems regarding celestial mechanics, I just want the NED to make a bit more sense to me so I can visualize these objects.