Another bright galaxy for my collection

[mdstuart]

Out again tonight hunting those galaxies.

Added seven to my lists tonight. I found a surprisingly bright galaxy in Leo. NGC 3636. Its a cauldwell one C40. It is fairly close to the NGC 3607/8 pair and is infact nearly as bright as those two.

The other highlight tonight was NGC 4460 which although faint is another edge on galaxy. They are rather special in my view..This one was just visible with direct vision in my 10 inch scope.

So with tonights 7 I have reached 296 galaxies. Nearing that 300 mark...

The big moon is just rising so I have come inside to warm up!

Clear skies everyone!

Mark

[Doc]

Well done Mark.

Do you keep detailed notes of what you see?

[DarkerSky]

That's an impressive tally there Mark. You really do rack them up. I wonder what the upper limit of visible galaxies would be with your aperture

Have you bagged NGC 3605? It is a mag 13 gx which you could get in the same FOV as 3607/08, just to the south of the pair.

[acey]

I wonder what the upper limit of visible galaxies would be with your aperture

The Shapley-Ames catalogue lists 1,246 bright galaxies down to mag 13.2, which should all be within reach of an 8-inch, though a substantial proportion are southern hemisphere. Herschel's catalogue of approximately 2,500 DSOs visible from UK mostly contains galaxies, and all should be do-able with a 12-inch. So I think the answer for a 10-inch is between one and two thousand. I've passed the 800 mark in my NGC count, of which about 600 were done with an 8-inch, most of them galaxies. That means I've done only about a tenth of what's possible with my present 12-inch aperture (maybe a sixth if I discount southern objects). So no danger of running out of things to see.

Well done, Mark, and keep it up!

[MartinB]

Good going Mark. What is your sky like?

[mdstuart]

MartinB my sky is about mag 5 and is pretty dark to the NE..So pretty good above 30 degrees above the horizon. Any galaxies with a deg of -20 or below are pretty much impossible so this limits me a bit.

Acey WOW you have done so many! If you have any galaxy data I would love to see it to pick out some possible targets I have not yet found..

Darker sky...Yes I did look at 3607/8 again last night in order to find 3626...And yes I can just (only just) with averted vision make out the small 3605 just of the bottom of this pair. It is right at the limit of my visibility on a dark moonless night.

DOC I draw a primitive drawing with the visible stars, mark the faintest star and then check its mag afterwards (typically 13.5 to 14.0) I record the usual stuff plus a "brightness" ranking..So 1 is visible with direct vision, 2 is obvious and easy to pick out, 0.5 is onyl visible with averted vision etc...I now have a big file full of my little circle drawings.. My galaxies tend only to be a circle or oval as appropriate as I often struggle to see structure...

Clear skies everyone..

Mark

[acey]

I'd suggest Shapley-Ames as a good source of targets:

revised_shapley_ames

Also the Herschel lists here:

Astronomical Catalogs in Excel

Herschel assigned "classes" to the objects he found, the faintest being classes 2 and 3 (e.g. Herschel numbers like H II 78, HIII 56 etc). I started out working through the 600 or so objects that are in the other classes apart from II and III (it includes lots of clusters and nebulae but it's mostly galaxies). You could download the full Excel Herschel list and eliminate the faint classes. Alternatively there's the Herschel 400, which again has a fair number of clusters etc.

I've spent quite a few years over my hunt - at the rate you're going you'll soon be way past me - good luck and happy hunting!

[Nexus 6]

Hi to all on SGL,

just wanted to say well done, what an effort to see so many dso's!

As a beginner of coming up on 2 years, I have really enjoyed the challenge of viewing them so rewarding,well it is when you finally find something as elusive as M1!

Recently I started keeping a log of my observations but think I need to improve my stats a bit yet.

Alan