Abell 426

[StarSapling]

I thought I'd give this galaxy cluster a gander.  I new that I would not be able to see much more that its brightest couple of member at best.  My Skyatlas 2000 charts don't even show the cluster, just two of its members NGC's 1270 and 1275.  Last night the transparency was only poor to fair, so I didn't expect to see anything, and at 60x, I didn't.  I was really just practicing my star hop to the location.

12/10/2015 - Oracle, Arizona - seeing good - trans poor/fair - obs. Good

120mm f5 refractor

Perseus:

Abell 426 - NGC1275? - Perseus A - 94X - Barely detectable with averted vision - too dim to confidently determine shape - just a small spot of nebulosity - a pair of widely spaced field stars to southwest - another closer, dimmer pair of field stars to the northeast - I thought I could pick out another very faint galaxy involved with several field stars to the east/northeast but I’m confidant that it was just wishful thinking combined with poor transparency - must revisit on a better night.

[Martin Meredith]

Good on you for having a go at these faint but fascinating clusters! Coincidentally, there's a nice shot of it here by Astrojedi last night. 

Martin

[clarkpm4242]

I found this http://pw2.netcom.com/~ahighe/a426.html a useful resource for observing Abell 426 galaxies.

Got up to 100+ using an 18" dob from Llyn Brenig in North Wales.  Seem to remember it was quite possible to get over 30 in a single eyepiece FOV!!!

I finally saw sense and moved on to other things  

Galaxy groups are cool to look at    Abell 1656 in Coma B. should be high on deep sky observing list.

Cheers

Paul