A giant, two dwarfs and a star cluster - all in one night

[wimvb]

An unexpected clear(-ish) night gave me enough data to image M31 (the giant), M32 (a dwarf galaxy to M31), And IV (another dwarf galaxy) and star cluster ngc 206, all in one view.

This is very little data and only very simple processing, just to check off two more dwarf galaxies in the Andromeda system.

RGB: 12 + 6 +6 * 5 minutes (2 hours)

L: 21 x 3 minutes (1 hour)

Gear: 190MN with ASI294MM and Optolong LRGB filters.

To find And IV: go down from M32 to just over 1/2 to the bottom edge. There are two brighter stars. The lower, blue one has And IV right next to it as a small fuzzy patch which is barely visible.

Edited January 19, 2023 by wimvb

[gorann]

Nice Wim! But maybe add some annotations so we know where to look;-)

[wimvb]

19 minutes ago, gorann said:

Nice Wim! But maybe add some annotations so we know where to look;-)

Where's the fun in that?

 

Ok, spoiler alert

[gorann]

Aha. Is NGC 206 a star cluster in M31, or something much closer?

[wimvb]

5 hours ago, gorann said:

Aha. Is NGC 206 a star cluster in M31, or something much closer?

In M31. Super large Pleiades.

[geeklee]

Excellent @wimvb I'll admit I had to kill some nearby intrusive light so I could see And IV !  Very nice capture especially as it was just a quick one!

Thanks for the directions and spoilers  

[wimvb]

On 20/01/2023 at 09:43, geeklee said:

Excellent @wimvb I'll admit I had to kill some nearby intrusive light so I could see And IV !  Very nice capture especially as it was just a quick one!

Thanks for the directions and spoilers  

Thank you, Lee.

You're welcome re the directions. And IV is difficult to find. It is also not part of the Andromeda system, as it's about 10 times further away. So, although it occupies a place in the list of dwarf satellites of M31, it is in fact completely unrelated to it.

[Paul M]

Yikes! And IV is dim!

I've struggled to identify it even on the annotated image on my phone. Had to Google some stock images to confirm what I was looking for. 

Reading up a bit further, it seems to be a very lonely little galaxy 😪

An impressive capture. Yet another object to add to my must-do list.