A Piscean DSO success tonight

[John]

Tonights session with my 130mm refractor was supposed to be all about testing the Rowan AZ100 mount really so most of the time I was observing targets that needed high power such as double stars, Neptune and Uranus.

While in the Aries / Pisces region of the sky, having found Uranus, just as a break I popped the 24mm Panoptic in the scope diagonal and had a lower power browse.

I was rather pleased to be able to pick up the faint glow of the core of the face-on spiral galaxy Messier 74 near the star Eta Piscium. This galaxy is 32 million light years away and considered a classic example of a grand design spiral galaxy. It is also however known as the "Phantom Galaxy" because of it's reputation for being quite hard to spot in moderate to small aperture scopes. One of the harder Messier objects I understand.

Anyway, I was pleased to find it with the 5.1 inch refractor. I'm fairly sure that I've seen it with my 12 inch dobsonian but that gulps a lot more light than the frac !

 

 

[JamesF]

You must have had better sky conditions than me to pick up M74, John.  It has been clear here, but the transparency was awful.  I was even struggling to pick out beta Lyrae :(

James

[John]

It's pretty good here. I've packed the scope in but just popped out with some 8x30 binoculars and found M33 quite easily. 

[mdstuart]

John

Well done on spotting M74 in your 130mm.

I was also touring the sky. The transparency here was not perfect but despite that I spotted a few new pisces galaxies around NGC 524.

Here is a pic from the internet.