Far and Closer

[mdstuart]

Lovely clear evening, the sky looked reasonable with mag 5 stars visible overhead.

I spent a couple of hours to the right of the base of the plough.

After a look at M63, lovely and bright!  I moved on to the faint stuff. I worked through a list of five galaxies NGC 4837, 4741, 5029, 5112 and 5107. 

This morning I had a look at them online and it turns out the first three are all relatively distant in terms of what I can observe at around 400mly. Here is in image of NGC 5029.  An elliptical galaxy with a high absolute brightness. 

It turns out the last two NGC 5112 and NGC 5107 are MUCH closer at around 50 million light years. They may be a pair NGC 5107 is an edge on dwarf spiral. In images it is close enough to see star forming regions. Here is a picture of both galaxies from mantrap skies. Both of these were faint and required averted vision to spot with my 20 inch. NGC 5112 was a very faint oval whereas NGC 5107 was a lovely slither.

 

What struck me was that I did not sense that the first three galaxies were ten times further away than the last two.

Keep looking up, there is so much to find.

Mark

[John]

Great report Mark 

It's been really nice having some good galaxy hunting skies lately.

I often do what you do, do some observing then find out a bit more about what I've been looking at. As you say, sometimes you find out something quite unexpected

Of course then the urge is to have another look, armed with that additional knowledge !

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by John

[Stu]

Nice report Mark. I guess there is such a difference in size and brightness that distance perception is impossible through the scope. Interesting to check out the differences afterwards 👍👍

[Mark at Beaufort]

Really enjoyable report Mark. Its great that we can have some deep sky observing - reminds me of last April.