Galaxy chain in SE Vir

[Nyctimene]

Took out the 13.1" Coulter Odyssey 1 once more this morning at 01.00 CEST. Average NELM about 5.5 mag, again good seeing. The newly fitted Rigel and the freshly aligned 6x30 finder made the way, starting from Arcturus and past "Napoleon's Hat" to the 12 mag galaxy NGC 5490 (as a warming up) rather easy. I spotted a round galaxy with direct vision; brighter core region. The other members of Arp 79 were invisible, as well as the galaxies IC 982 and 983 (Arp 117). The globular cluster M5 was my next starting point to the galaxy chain with 5846 as the brightest member, 1° SE of 110 Vir. The easternmost galaxy, 5850, a 11mag barred spiral, was visible directly, as was  (to the west) 5846, a10 mag bright, round galaxy with a brighter core region. With 250x mag (6 mmf Skywatcher UWA),  the directly (1 arc min) S situated 5846 A  could be separated easily, forming a "mini - M 51" galaxy pair. The smaller 12.5 mag 5845 followed, 5839 as the westernmost (13 mag) appeared brighter than the catalogue data (SkySafari). All well visible as a nice chain within the 1.07°FoV of the 26mmf/62° ES LER. A rewarding target, that I'm visiting often with the 18", but it's visible even with the 8" f/4 Hofheim traveldob. 5838 (11.3) showed as a 3:1 elongated spindle, 6 arc min N of an 8 mag star. There are more galaxies close by, but I lost, changing eyepieces, the orientation, and was too lazy to get back to the field. I finished with the globulars M 92 and 6229 (the latter forming a nice equilateral triangle with two 8 mag stars). Upcoming high haze and astronomical dawn; so I finished at 02.45; pleased after having revisited some celestial "old friends", and so to bed.

Attached a picture (Martin Germano); 5850 to the left:

Additional info: 5850, 5846, and 5838 are plotted in the Pocket Sky Atlas (PSA, pg. 46), as well as 5813, a nice round galaxy in the middle of a cross of four stars.

Thanks for reading

Stephan

Edited June 10, 2019 by Nyctimene
typo; info added

[estwing]

And thanks for posting!..great report Stephan.

[estwing]

Think I had a go at picking out Pal 5 just SSE of M5 but to no avail. NGC 5746 is one of my favourites just to the east of this group...clear skies.

[Lurcher]

Yes this is a brilliant report and record. I'm intrigued by "Napoleon's Hat". I haven't heard of that. I'll look it up in a moment hopefully.

NGC 5850 looks like a wonderful target. Thanks very much for posting.

(I love the details like changing eye piece and this causing you to lose track of where you are in the sky. It really puts you in the moment. And I'm glad I'm not the only one that has those "oh why did I do that, it was going so well until I did that" moments!).

But looks like you found and saw lots of great targets.

All the best.

[mapstar]

Great read and a nice haul of fuzzies.

Visited most of them several times and some great memories of being in that part of the sky, probably due to it being warmer viewing conditions.