Yes I have seen a 3C abel >400mly away galaxy!

[mdstuart]

It was surprisingly dark by midnight last night could see M31 and the double cluster and milky way with the naked eye and mag 5 stars. Not too cold which was great..I decided to have a go at observing..

Started with checking if that Pannstars comet was still visible. Skyhound map in hand...after some scanning and missing it there it was ..a very ill defined glow a bit like M110...a bit better with averted vision but still easy to miss unless you know where to look. Its now moving towards Draco in the sky and out of the solar system..I think this may be my last sighting of it?

Looking forward to comet Ison..now mag 13 in Gemini and starting to form a tail!

Then tried for a new galaxy..started with the Hercules square and then star hopped to the right using a Carte du ciel chart. and just below and left of a pair of stars in the finder ...there it was ..NGC 6166..bingo..

A faint small glow to the left of a little group of seven field stars..best at 200x.

So I went inside very pleased and then typed NGC 6166 in to google and ..

Turns out its 490mly away! and the central galaxy of SUPER cluster Abel 2199.

WOW...I have now seen one of those 3C double lobbed black hole driven monster x ray sources! (3C 338) that we hear about at Bristol Astronomy Society at times.

More notes from the internet.....

NGC 6166 is suspected to have formed through a number of galaxy collisions. It has a large number of globular clusters (between 6,200-22,000) orbiting the galaxy.

The galaxy harbours a supermassive black hole at its center with a mass of 1 billion .[6]

NGC 6166 is known to host an active nucleus, classified as an FR I source, which powers two symmetric parsec-scale radio jets and radio lobes and it's caused by the infall of gas into its center caused by a cooling flow that deposits 200 solar masses of gas every year there.

Check out the crowded field of galaxies around NGC 6166!

http://www.saratogaskies.com/image.pl?i=29

I could see the 7 brightest stars in this image and 6166 but nothing else at the eye piece. Perhaps I might do better when I get the 14 inch dark star Dob I bought recently?

So its just a fuzzy blob but its special to me!

Mark

Sent from my BlackBerry 9320 using Tapatalk

[Andy_E]

Great report. Good to see someone else who loves the summer skies!

[SnakeyJ]

Cheers Mark, great report full of very infectious enthusiasm. I had a great night viewing and imaging til 3am, but concentrated on M3, M13 and M31 - all a bit brighter and deasier to find, but transparency and seeing were pretty good and nice to have a new moon and dark skies for a change - well worth being out

[Scott]

Wow Mark, such enthusiasm and passion. As already mentioned, very inspirational. And yes....last night was a great night to be "out there".

[cotterless45]

Brilliant, keep it up ! You're lucky to have good sky, here it's just been light and hazy but worth trying for

clear skies,

Nick.

[mdstuart]

Just been reading again and this galaxy is in the "great wall". A massive long structure of galaxies that runs from Leo at 350 mly away to Hercules where its about 500 mly away.

Still living off the excitement of this observation.

Mark

[John]

Terrific stuff Mark - a motivating report

Mind boggling to think in terms of structures that are composed of galaxies - I guess such things must be the largest formations / objects (if thats the right term ?) that we yet know of ?