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A comet, a group of 5 galaxies and more

mdstuart

By mdstuart
in Observing - Deep Sky

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mdstuart

mdstuart

Posted
Posted

Lovely dark skies are back!

Had a great few hours looking at various targets. Inspired to go out by Dark Skies Mike on Twitter.....

First Comet Lovejoy at 3AU. Still very visible but now requiring averted vision. Right next to two faint field stars...So went back two hours later and it had moved about 3 minutes of arc. Its now in Bootes and getting lower slowly so its soon going to be tough to pick out. I will miss it..is that silly?

Anyway spend the rest of the evening in Pegasus and Andromeda. Picked off a number of small faint galaxies NGC 7286 NGC 7490 NGC 7053 NGC 7290 NGC 7315 and NGC 573.

Managed finally to catch NGC 812. Its one of those mag 11 this should be easy then objects. Tried many times with my old 10 inch to no avail but just got it tonight with averted vision. Its one of those pesky low surface brightness oval ones. I can see why I struggled with the 10 inch.

The other amazing observation was the NGC 7385 field. After reading about it in the Webb DSO magazines, yes they put two write ups on this group over a few years I thought I would go back with the 16 inch. Lovely field but all faint and between 300-350 MLY away. NGC 7385 and NGC 7386 are fairly easy oval objects with averted vision. That would be it unless you had a map and hence where to look. After much effort I managed 7383 (quite tough) and 7389 / 7387 (very tough). There are many more if you have a big dob..or a camera! or one of those fancy video set ups..Go on put it on that target list..Its relatively high in the east at midnight.

Here is a photo I found online. I saw five of the six "bight" ones. NGC 7390 was not visible to me last night despite trying!

post-1454-0-26230900-1439713886_thumb.jp

So a lovely session. Finished off by staring in awe at NGC 7331 and its companions for a wind down.

Mark

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alan potts

alan potts

Posted
Posted

I had a look for it with the 12 inch LX and a laptop doing the guiding 3 nights ago and whilst I was confident that the position was correct there was no sign of it averted or otherwise, so for me it has gone in this instrument though probably still in range for the 18 inch.

Alan.

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John

John

Posted
Posted

Nice report Mark :smiley:

I'll give the 7385 group a go when I next get a chance - you never know !

Talking of things that ought to look brighter, I found NGC 7640 in Andromeda last night. It seemed no more than a rather faint elongated blur within a triangle of stars but it's stated brightness is 11.8. It seemed much fainter than that last night though - I'd have guessed more like mag 13 :icon_scratch:

Still I found it and it was the right shape !. It would have been very easy to overlook though.

Forcast a bit mixed tonight but I might put the scope out anyway, just in case :smiley:

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