M106; Bright spiral galaxy.

[cotterless45]

Just took out the Telrad chart ,a 21mm and 12mm Ep, Had a tour of Leo before scooting up to Canes Venatici and Ursa Major. Brighter and more detailed than M106,109,94,63 was M106.

Find her half way between Chara and Phad.At x60 and x100 there was detail and the elongated shape of this Seyfert galaxy.What really stood out was the brightness.

Then a scan of the whole area surrounding and to the south. There are a mass of galxies here.

Coma Bernices was still too bright with city glow and the wind had set in, just excuses for hot choccy.

The Bear standing on his tail and the hunting dogs are clear and happy hunting grounds at this time of year, take a tour, clear skies, Nick.

[Double Kick Drum]

So many galaxies, so little time.

I still have M106 and M109 to tick off. Not sure why I have never attemped M106 (decent magnitude but lower surface brightness, maybe) but the other I have tried a few times and failed, admittedly not when it was at its best though.

[Terrynak]

Shouldn't be a problem seeing M109 with a 127mm scope, especially when it's high in the sky. I tried many times with a 100mm F/4 reflector in a borderline white/red zone and failed - was finally able to pick it up easily when I moved to an orange zone site. I went to a star party in a green zone last year and M109 was extremely bright.

Galaxies are my favorite DSO's because there are so many of them out there, especially this time of year, and they are the most challenging objects to detect. I use a 100mm scope and in an orange zone (also called "suburban" zone) on a clear night, I will search for galaxies with visual magnitudes as low as 12.0 as long as the surface brightness is less than 13.8. This requires using detailed star charts going down to at least 11.5 mag. so you know exactly where to look using averted vision relative to the nearby stars. You might just get a fleeting glimpse of it, or it may just pop in and out of view from the corner of your eye, but to me that counts as a valid observation and I make sketches of all the galaxies I detect in this way, along with the stars in the vicinity.

[Double Kick Drum]

Shouldn't be a problem seeing M109 with a 127mm scope, especially when it's high in the sky. I tried many times with a 100mm F/4 reflector in a borderline white/red zone and failed - was finally able to pick it up easily when I moved to an orange zone site. I went to a star party in a green zone last year and M109 was extremely bright.

Galaxies are my favorite DSO's because there are so many of them out there, especially this time of year, and they are the most challenging objects to detect. I use a 100mm scope and in an orange zone (also called "suburban" zone) on a clear night, I will search for galaxies with visual magnitudes as low as 12.0 as long as the surface brightness is less than 13.8. This requires using detailed star charts going down to at least 11.5 mag. so you know exactly where to look using averted vision relative to the nearby stars. You might just get a fleeting glimpse of it, or it may just pop in and out of view from the corner of your eye, but to me that counts as a valid observation and I make sketches of all the galaxies I detect in this way, along with the stars in the vicinity.

Interesting. The dimmest magnitude DSO I have picked up to date is just shy of mag. 11. Good skies would allow me to go to somewhere close to 12 (but never from my back garden). I allow for lower surface brightness for the bigger galaxies as the brighter parts may be visible. For those beyond mag. 10 I tend to stick to a sb better than 13.5.

I haven't got as far as sketches yet. My drawing in the dark needs improvement.

[DarkerSky]

Got a stunning M106 last night in the EP. Great sky clarity and steady seeing. Traced one of the brighter galaxy arms out to the north, and got hints of mottling out to the south. A nice bright and quite intricate core along with a superb elongation of the whole thing with averted vision and some nice detail in general.

[Terrynak]

Interesting. The dimmest magnitude DSO I have picked up to date is just shy of mag. 11. Good skies would allow me to go to somewhere close to 12 (but never from my back garden). I allow for lower surface brightness for the bigger galaxies as the brighter parts may be visible. For those beyond mag. 10 I tend to stick to a sb better than 13.5.

I haven't got as far as sketches yet. My drawing in the dark needs improvement.

Good rules of thumb! In general I use lower powers (30X-48x) for the large galaxies with low SB's (>=14.0) and higher powers (80x-105x) for the smaller ones with higher SB's (12.0-13.5).

From my home (white zone), I concentrate on planets, double stars and brighter star clusters with my small scopes (ranging from 76mm to 100mm).

Since I have to travel far to observe galaxies (and nebulae) at a suburban orange-zone site, I log and sketch my deep-sky observations to make these trips worthwhile. To see in the dark, I use a pen flashlight with red plastic covered over the bulb. First I jot down the location of the background stars, followed by the galaxy (or nebula) itself, represented by a smudge using the side of a pencil. Whenever I compare my crude sketches with a wide-field image of the galaxy I find online, I'm surprised at how often I get the LOCATION of the galaxy right relative to the surrounding stars, if not the sketch of the galaxy itself!

Going back to M106, it's one of the few large galaxies that is also fairly bright, so you can see some detail even with a small scope, if I recall. So I would use high magnification to look for detail on objects like these. Looking forward to observing this one again very soon.