C3, NGC 4236 between the clouds

[WaveSoarer]

After a clear start to the evening here, I set up my 200p with the intention to do some imaging. As usual, after it was properly dark and I was pretty much ready to go, the clouds rolled in  - though they were thin and quite broken. This put paid to any thoughts of imaging and so I decided to have a look for the galaxy C3, NGC 4236, which is relatively large and has a low surface brightness. I didn't have much confidence that my 8" F5 Newtonian would have the light grasp to pick out anything but I thought that I'd have a go anyway. The star hop is very straightforward and I managed to get the finder lined up in the right place without too much difficulty. The faint background marker stars were also visible in the finder and so lining up wasn't so bad, although equatorial mounts can be a bit awkward at high DEC values. I popped in my 15 mm EP and had a look. There was nothing much to see to start with apart from the stars I used for lining up the telescope was obviously much brighter and I spent a bit of time matching the views between what I could see in the fnder and the main scope. After a bit of time I could see that the background sky glow wasn't uniform and there was a hint of a slightly brighter band  that was just about visible. It's easy to confuse internal refflections within the scope for features (even with the dew shield attached) and so I used the RA and DEC controllers to jog the scope slightly to see if the band would move with the field stars. Sure enough, the band did move in register with the stars. I had my laptop at hand and I looked up some astro images of the galaxy and, indeed, the band I could see was lined up relative to the field stars in the same way as the galaxy  is aligned in the images. I was really please with this as I could at least make out something of the brighter regions of the galaxy and the night ended on a bit of a high.

[cotterless45]

Lovely report, any observing at this time of year is most welcome, well spotted !

Nick.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice report. I got that with my C8, but only after a number of failed attempts. It is doable 8" scopes, if conditions are good