M104 : The Sombrero Galaxy.

[cotterless45]

Another clear night soon deteriorated to thin clag, making all but the brightest galaxies fade. I was pleased to see M104 on the lower boundary of Virgo. At x40 I picked it out and at x100 it showed a long bright streak. Don't expect the wonder of a layered hat, that only appears in long exposure pics.

Bode's , M64, M94 , M57 and M94 were bright. Had a shot at delta Serpens, split at 3.9 arcsecs. By then there were just the clusters of Cygnus ( again) although the star fields did look stunning at x25.

A refractor does give that crisp clean image especially in

clear skies,

Nick.

[swamp thing]

Another clear night soon deteriorated to thin clag, making all but the brightest galaxies fade. I was pleased to see M104 on the lower boundary of Virgo. At x40 I picked it out and at x100 it showed a long bright streak. Don't expect the wonder of a layered hat, that only appears in long exposure pics.

Nick.

It's a pretty impressive galaxy from a dark site. The hat effect can be well seen. Check it out next time your at a dark sky buddy, you'll find its quite a sight.

[Qualia]

Ay, when I can get to the scrub-lands I love looking at M 104 and at the moment - along with M 51 - it is my favourite galaxy. As Steve suggests, you really do get that elongated galaxy look bulging towards the centre with its relatively bright stellar core. At around 120x the unmistakeable look is achieved, and at around 250x you get to glimpse its central dust lane.

Anyway, thank you for a great write up.

[Joe_L]

I got my first view of it a couple of weeks ago in my Nexstar 6se and was quite impressed. Waiting for another chance. Tried again Sunday night - it seemed quite clear but by the time I had got aligned and checked out a couple of other targets everything started going dim. It must have been another layer of haze moveing over - seems like every time this season we get a clear night early on it hazes over between 11pm and midnight.

[Qualia]

...seems like every time this season we get a clear night early on it hazes over between 11pm and midnight.

This may sound a bit weird and probably won't hold up in a tribunal of hardcore positivists, but...I have found that if you can see the traces of a plane's contrails (condensation trails), if they spread out a little and are no longer sharply defined, you're probably going to have a wee bit of haze, thin cloud cover, water vapour, stuff that messes up seeing in the next few hours.

[Joe_L]

Good point, I live right underneath the main southbound west coast flightpath in Cumbria so we get a lot of trails some days, though less at night. Some days they;re sharply defined other days diffuse. The other night I could see lines of cirrus but there was quite significant dimming of all but the brighter stars as the night went on, but I think it was all over rather than localised.

[acey]

It's a pretty impressive galaxy from a dark site. The hat effect can be well seen. Check it out next time your at a dark sky buddy, you'll find its quite a sight.

I agree. My first ever view of M104 was with 10x50 binoculars at a dark site in Greece and even with the bins I reckoned I could see a hat shape - with a scope there's no doubt. The thing about this galaxy is that its surface brightness increases fairly uniformly towards the centre: small aperture shows a little hat and big aperture shows the same shape extending over a much wider area. Assuming the sky is dark enough, of course, and the object is high enough in the sky.

[jason.p]

For some reason M104 doesn't appear in TLAO. I see from my sky atlas that it's between Spica and Algorab. Is it a particularly hard one to find?

(I can find Spica, but not so sure about Algorab)

Sent from my GT-P5110 using Tapatalk HD

[jabberwocky]

I saw M104 for the first time last week, oh the joy of now not having loads of trees and a house in the way

[Qualia]

For some reason M104 doesn't appear in TLAO. I see from my sky atlas that it's between Spica and Algorab. Is it a particularly hard one to find?

No, it's easy and even from the middle of my LP city with the 10" I can find it - although with nothing like the detail from the scrub lands. Anyway, I don't bother hunting M 104 from Spica but instead just head up from the beautiful double, Algorab, straw-yellow with a tiny companion looking like a planet orbiting a star. With a low mag EP, or your finder, just nudge your telescope in the direction of Porrima in Virgo, go real slow and you'll go pass a couple of +5 mag stars and then you'll come across a 'double' star and right there in that area you'll be able to pick out M 104. To get an idea of distance, it doesn't seem to be anymore than 7º from Algorab.

[mert]

It is indeed a stunning galaxy, I had my first view of it on Tuesday.

[RikM]

M104 is a lovely galaxy. I find it from Algorab as well. It is about 1/3 of the way towards Porrima and off to the left a tad. When you are in the right area, in the finder, there is a distinctive 'wedge' of stars that point to the galaxy.

[southernman]

As others have said m104 is a nice bright galaxy. I've even been able to pick it up in my 80mm refractor from a suburban location. Though admittedly I'm probably better placed to view it.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

For some reason M104 doesn't appear in TLAO. I see from my sky atlas that it's between Spica and Algorab. Is it a particularly hard one to find?

(I can find Spica, but not so sure about Algorab)

Sent from my GT-P5110 using Tapatalk HD

Have you tried looking under NGC 4594? Some books list it like that, because it was not in Messier's original lists.

It is not a difficult star hop from Spica, I find, and a very rewarding

[Charon]

Is it possible to view the Sombrero Galaxy with my CPC800? Up until now I have failed miserably, I have a excellent dark site so light pollution is not an excuse I can use, so is it down to operator error - me!!! ( sorry to barge in on your post Nick)

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Is it possible to view the Sombrero Galaxy with my CPC800? Up until now I have failed miserably, I have a excellent dark site so light pollution is not an excuse I can use, so is it down to operator error - me!!! ( sorry to barge in on your post Nick)

I have spotted it easily with my GP-C8 recently (report here), which has the same optics as the CPC800 on a Great Polaris EQ mount. This was from a suburban site, so you should be fine. Sometimes it is a matter of date-format that throws the thing (US-style rather than UK-style)

[Special K]

I've been saving this one up and haven't viewed it yet. I'm hoping my relatively small scope is going to give me a nice surprise!

[WaveSoarer]

I had my scope out in the front garden for a change to view M104 especially. Although there are a couple of street lights out front, M104 was fairly clear and there was even a hint of the dust band on the elongated smudge. A real visual treat.