Galaxy fest - lovely night! Including one in Gemini!

[mdstuart]

As other have said last night in the UK was great for galaxy hunting. Very good transparancy and dry air...

Managed to add eight new galaxies to my observations. Now up to 598!

Put my sun glasses on first to look at M81/82 to avoid getting my dark sky vision impaired and then...

NGC 3359 - Lovely large but low sbr object. As expected it turns out to be a spiral galaxy,

NGC 2646 - Tough faint object. Averted vision for this one,

NGC 2798 - One of a pair but I could only see 2798. The core was bright enough to hold with direct vision,

NGC 2749 - Small but relatively easy to see. Eliptical object 180 million light years away,

NGC 2648 - Again relatively easy spot,

NGC 3094 - On to LEO. This one was a tought low SBR object right next to a field star,

NGC 3177 - Brightest of the night. Visible with DIRECT vision....yes

NGC 2418 - GEMINI yes really there is a galaxy in Gemini. Small and faint distorted spiral (I could not see the distortions) 225 million light years away.

FAB night!

Mark

[Double Kick Drum]

Nearly six hundred galaxies - all with the 10" or less?

Great stuff in a sky maybe only a small fraction better than mine. Proves how much is truly out there but at mag. 12.2 , I would need to be in a perfect sky to bag a Gemini galaxy.

Thanks for sharing.

[mdstuart]

My sky on a good night is mag 5.5 overhead...I have the usual lights lower down which are not too bad on a dry clear night. Any galxy with a - dec is much more challenging for me. I cannot get that sculptor coin galaxy for example. It just lifts above the fence but is washed out...

Mark

[cotterless45]

Neat, got NGC 3359 last night and a few others. You'll find the other galaxy NGC 2339 ( mag.11.6) on the same side as NGC 2418.

last night was absolutely cracking for the galaxies, clear skies,

Nick.

[mdstuart]

Another galaxy in Gemini....I must give that a go then..

Mark

[WaveSoarer]

That's amazing. We were observing in the region of the plough. I completely screwed up my star hop and chanced upon NGC 3949, which wasn't observed and was only obvious from a stack of 60 second images. Once I got my initial star for the hop sorted out we found the real target, M109, which was much more impressive.

[Astralstroll]

I really do need to head out to a darker sky for moer DSO hunting! Maybe tie for a holiday to the country!

Dave.

[Terrynak]

Mark, out of these eight I've only seen NGC 3359 in UrMa. It's slowly getting harder to find new galaxies with my small scopes, especially my Short Tube 80 and 100mm SkyScanner Newtonian, so I've been concentrating more on open clusters lately with these scopes.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Great haul! If I get a chance, I will have a look at a couple of the ones you listed (including the Gemini ones). Nearly 600 galaxies (I am at 275, or thereabouts).

[yesteryeargames]

What galaxys should i try and find tonight, i have found andromeda, i am going to my first proper dark site and need a few of the best on offer to search for ?

[mdstuart]

http://bristolweather.org.uk/astronomy/list.html

Look at this and try any galaxy listed as 3/4/5 in any particular constellation.

M81 and M82 are the next brightest after M31..in Ursa Major they are overhead at the moment.

Mark

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