M3 and a Bonus Leo Treo

[PeterStudz]

I did this last Tuesday, 6th April in the early hours. My second attempt at M3 and personally I’m happy with the result given the limited gear and my inexperience. Taken with an iPhone 12, cropped and edited with the standard camera app plus Filterstorm. Telescope Slywatcher Skyhawk 1145P on EQ1 with economy motor drive. StarGuider 12mm eyepiece. Single 30 second exposure with the standard camera app.

After doing this, messing around and observing M3 for a couple of hours I decided to see if I could see the Leo Treo. I’ve never tried looking at these before. And Leo wasn’t in a good position. I’m in Southampton which suffers from a considerable amount of light pollution. From my garden East to South is best (the higher the better). But anything SSW to West is poor as that’s right over the docks which are lit up like an Christmas tree all night an every night. And that’s where Leo was by the time I decided to have a look. 

But as hard as I tried I could not see any hint of the galaxies with my eyes. So I decided to stick my iPhone to the eyepiece and take a searching 30 sec exposure. Then move one FOV and take another. After a few attempts the galaxies appeared like magic on the phone screen. The camera was showing something that I could not see with my eyes. Sure, faint but obvious. Even NGC 3628. OK, they are very faint and washed out (you might need to use averted vision on the picture to see them - lol) but that’s hardly surprising especially with a small telescope. In a decent dark location it would surely be much better. I wasn’t going to post this here but then I thought what the hell! Haven’t edited it much - just cropped, rotated - so you can get an idea how faint they are and what the light pollution was like. Personally I was over the moon just to find them.

I have plans of going somewhere in the New Forest , which isn’t far away, and giving it a proper go.

Edited April 12, 2021 by PeterStudz