Arp 91 at the Summer Solstice

[Bill S]

A snapshot from a few nights ago. Before getting into EEVA (or whatever we want to call it) I would not have thought that it was a good idea to look for faint galaxies during the shortest night of the year with no astronomical darkness at 53.5 deg N (and 18 day old Moon - waning gibbous coming up as well). At least it's not too cold.

Still, clear skies are rare so...

The Webb Deep Sky Society's Galaxy of the Month for June 2019 is NGC 5954 in Serpens Caput, which together with NGC 5953 is Arp 91.

See https://www.webbdeepsky.com/galaxies/2019/

and

https://www.webbdeepsky.com/images/galaxies/arp91/arp91_finder.pdf

Here's my snapshot with Starlight Live + Jocular. Things were visible after only a few subs but I left it running while I looked at background information on the web

As mentioned in the linked Webb Soc pages Arp 91 is to the top left and NGC 5951 is to the bottom right.

And, as we know, the nights are drawing in.

Best regards

Bill

 

 

[RobertI]

Nice piece of work Bill, lovely capture and interesting background info. 👍

[SIDO]

Awesome stuff Bill, "no astronomical darkness" bites the dust in that shot, nice capture indeed...

Thanks for the links too.

                         Freddie.

Edited June 28, 2019 by SIDO

[Martin Meredith]

Hi Bill

Definitely worth staying up for! That's a new one on me. I like the look of NGC 5951 in the lower right too. There is the very faintest hint of a mag 19.4 galaxy S of Arp 91 too, so not bad for midsummer! 

True, the nights are drawing in. I always get a funny look when I mention this fact (with a certain amount of glee) to my wife.

Martin

[Mike JW]

Hi Bill, Well done. No need for astro dark to do astronomy. I have had some of the best observing in GB in the light summer months, especially in July. Here in E.Anglia it has been some of the cloudiest summer weather for years so no observing for me. Doubles observing is easily do able in the June/July period.

I looked at Arp 91 back in May of this year with my C11 and ultrastar, 16 x 15 sec subs. Pleased to get the hints of star forming regions (knots) in 5954 (upper galaxy), hint of a dust lane and also the tidal stream between the two. An interesting point is, of the two galaxies it is NGC 5954 that is most disrupted - does this mean it is less dense than  5953?

Mike