Galactic Multi-tasking

25 April 2020, 22:15 – 00:30

Conditions: Cold, with a light breeze

Seeing: Good
Transparency: Average

Lately I’ve been using one telescope at a time (i.e. observing or imaging, but not both). On the evening of 24 April, with clear skies forecast for the entire night, I hauled both rigs into the garden and began the careful process of assembling, balancing and polar-aligning my astrophotography set-up. An hour later I was ready to begin imaging … at which point clouds rolled in from the north and completely covered the sky. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me, and it probably won’t be the last, but that’s English weather for you.

Undaunted, I repeated the process the following evening and this time the skies stayed clear. My imaging target was M101 (more on that in the next post), and while that was in progress I used the XT10 to track down some more galaxies around the Virgo/Coma border. (As I’ve discovered this spring, there are always more galaxies…)

All observations carried out at 133x (Nagler 9mm) unless otherwise stated.

NGC 4212, galaxy, Coma Berenices
Smooth oval glow, gradually brighter towards the centre. Possible extended bar-like core. (Photographs show no such feature, although there does appear to be a brightening along the long axis, which is possibly what I saw.)

NGC 4216, galaxy, Virgo
Pretty impressive edge-on (or close to edge-on) galaxy with very bright core. Suggestion of dark cut-off on eastern side.

NGC 4267, galaxy, Virgo
Round haze with bright core. Averted vision revealed stellar nucleus and several faint field stars.

NGC 4168, galaxy, Virgo
Faint round haze west of NGC 4216. Brighter towards centre with averted vision.

NGC 4178, galaxy, Virgo
Very faint extended haze west of bright star. Low surface brightness object; easier to see when the star is out of the field.

NGC 4124, galaxy, Virgo
Another very faint oval haze, aligned roughly east-west. Brighter core and stellar nucleus with averted vision.

NGC 4293, galaxy, Coma Berenices
As per previous observation of this object. Extended lens-shaped galaxy. A little brighter towards the centre with averted vision.

NGC 4147, globular cluster, Coma Berenices
I’ve seen this cluster before, but it makes a refreshing change from all the galaxies nearby. That said, it’s a typical NGC globular: round, condensed, grainy with averted vision, but not resolved.

24 Comae Berenices, double star
Attractive pairing. Yellow primary and a pale blue secondary (some 20 arcseconds west).

NGC 4651, “The Umbrella Galaxy”, Coma Berenices
Large oval haze, aligned east-west. Brighter towards centre, mottled envelope.

NGC 4710, galaxy, Coma Berenices
Edge-on “spindle” galaxy, quite bright, aligned SW-NE. Field star east of nucleus. Seemed mottled with averted vision, particularly north of the core.

NGC 4689, galaxy, Coma Berenices
Large round haze, low surface brightness. A little brighter towards the centre with averted vision, but otherwise featureless. Two field stars to north.

I took a break from galaxies to look at M5 again, before revisiting one of the galaxies I saw on Monday.

NGC 5846, galaxy, Virgo
Appeared as before, but this time I could just about see the bright spot (corresponding with NGC 5846A) south of the nucleus with averted vision. It almost looks like the core of NGC 5846 has split into two unequal parts.

With the imaging run nearing the end of its sequence, I changed the Nagler 9mm for the DeLite 7mm (171x) and rounded off the session with a look at two planetary nebulae in Hercules.

NGC 6210, planetary nebula, Hercules
Very bright blue-green ellipse. Seemed brighter on the western (leading) side.

IC 4593, planetary nebula, Hercules
Very small, almost stellar disc of blue-grey light, east of bright star. Best seen using averted vision (because the 11th magnitude central star overwhelms the nebulosity in direct vision). Nice close double star to the east.