Galaxy overhead!

[mdstuart]

Finally a clear evening, the wife is at work on a late shift....

So out I go at 11..its light...11.30 getting dark...12.00 darkish?

So after another few mesmerising view of that wild duck cluster:eek:....I moved down to a globular cluster NGC 6712. A nice fairly large but even low surface brightness circle. I could not even at high power make out any indivdual stars but it is mag 10 and fairly low in the haze. Lovely orange? colour on the WWT.

I must get a new galaxy I think....so after much looking around I spot a target in Bootes. Pretty high up..NGC 5899. It is mag 12 but it was visible at low power. A lovely long wisp of delicate glow in the 9mm Ortho. It was possible to hold with direct vision.

Dreyer's description: cB, pL, pmE, smbMN

Even astrogeek seems not to have logged this one..

The Way I See It > NGC 5899 Observing Log

Found a nice picture of it to put as my screen on the Blackberry to look at over the coming days.

Seems that someone also enjoyed in on cloudy nights...

"NGC 5899: Great galaxy, did not mean to find it but I’m glad I did! Very bright and elongated with high surface brightness. There is mottling in the surface. Surprised how bright it is even with a 6th magnitude star in the FOV."

Perhaps you images can pick out the lovely but odd bright spiral arms overlayed on the background glow?

Clear skies to you all..

Mark