galaxy NGC 5746

[WaveSoarer]

Mrs WaveSoarer and I are just back from a lovely week on St Agnes, The Isles of Scilly, where we had a week of beautiful sunny weather and clear night-time skies. We had to wait for a few days after full moon to really benefit from the great conditions you can get there. We were even treated to a great display of  noctilucent clouds. A pair of binoculars is a must have item to pack. Anyway, back home and with a clear night in prospect, I set up the scope just as Polaris popped in to view so that I could get polar aligned. As it was still fairly bright, even just after 11 pm, I viewed Saturn for while. This, as ever, looks spectacular and I got good views at 300x even with the scope still cooling. I then went for a hunt to find the edge-on galaxy NGC 5746. This is quite an easy star hop from the naked eye star 109 Vir, which is conveniently, for the time being anyway, on a line half way between Saturn and Arcturus. After a bit of checking between the finder, the main scope and Stellarium I settled on where the galaxy should be. I didn't see anything that I could say for sure was the galaxy with my 15 mm EP. I wasn't overly surprised to be honest as it was always going to be a bit of an ask. I do have a "thng" about galaxies so I couldn't resist trying. I set up my DSLR, anyway, and focused up using my Bahtinov mask on 109Vir. Sure enough, a 120 s sub did indeed show the galaxy right where I expected it to be. I then spent about an hour and a half doing some imaging while I enjoyed the clear skies with my binculars. It was reasonably transparent most of the time though occasionally bright stars had a hint of a halo due to thin passing cloud. By about half twelve the Milky Way was just about visible and I could sweep down from Cygnus, through the Wild Duck Cluster, and down to the Eagle Nebula and the Omega Nebula (the neighbour's roof prevented me getting any lower). With the imaging finished, I took the camera off and popped the 15 mm EP back in. The galaxy was then just about visible with a bit of averted vision - though it appeared as nothing more than a fleeting linear smudge. I think it wil be well worth revisiting this galaxy in the spring when the sky is darker and it's higher up. I rounded off the evening by viewing M10 and M12, which were tricky to locate in the finder though they were fairly straightforward to find using my binoculars, and the spectacular Wild Duck Cluster. The latter looked incredible on a full range of magnification, even up to 300 x. The dark band through the centre was very obvious. A great night though packing up at 2 am is a bit late for me.