Big Dipper galaxy pairs

[jetstream]

Tonight was an exceptional evening (for a while) with the sky at 21.7 mag & above avg transp.One of my goals was to try & get all the galaxies listed in the bowl of the Plough (Pocket Sky atlas),not many really-9-but some have eluded me.Finally got ngc 3613,3619,3998,3982,3898,3780 all at once.The pairs of 3738,3756 and 3729,3718 were also bagged in the 10" dob.Next to M101,ngc 5474 was seen,kind of a tough one.A bunch more galaxies were seen below Phecda just sky cruisin,were gonna have to start logging them in time as well.Some of these were nicely bright-looking forward to revisiting.

My first goal was to see M51's spirals-it looked promising early on,bright in my 18mm ES,but low in the sky.So we waited.....and it rose.....and it got worse! I was pretty much froze by this time,-32c tonite.Ice crystals had started to precipitate out of the cold air,taking my above avg transp and flushing it.One last peak with my galaxy killer10mm revealed just the subtlest of spiral arms.

For the fun of it I compared the 17mm Ethos to my 18mm ES 82 on galaxy detection-there was not one galaxy that could be seen in the TV and not the ES,mind you tonight these were not threshold galaxies for me.Great EP performance.

PS-the 18mmES is the only one that never frosted up once in three hours @ -30

[YKSE]

That's a lot galaxies for a cold night

[cotterless45]

Nice cold report !

I remember just scanning the bowl of UMa with a 10" LB from a dark site and being surprised at the amount of galaxies hidden there,

Nick.

[mdstuart]

Very interesting read..

That Plough has SO many galaxies..

The ones I have seen are listed here:

http://bristolweather.org.uk/galaxies/galaxies_in_ursa_major.html

It is good to keep a log of some sort as otherwise you will lose track!

Mark

Sent from my BlackBerry 9320 using Tapatalk

[jetstream]

+1 on the log Mark,I have been just checking off the ones shown in my atlas.I just took a peak at at your link.....holy cow!That is impressive to say the least,once the brighter ones listed in my book are bagged,maybe time to pursue fainter ones.I saw a couple not listed in my book,no idea which ones!