More galaxies

[mdstuart]

A fine night so a chance to try out the new 8mm Hyperion.

After watching the space station and space shuttle go over earlier it was hard waiting for it to get dark..its getting later again..

I picked P27 and P28 of my mag 8.5 atlass (Toshimi Taki pdf one) and set about the unseen named galaxies.

After a few blanks on 2749/2750/2770 finally I started to pick up a few. Best of the night was NGC 3245. Very bright and almost circular mag 10 object. I could not see the supermassive black hole that apparantly lies in this galaxy.

A few fainter but pretty oval galaxies logged NGC 3067, 2916 nr 2903 in Leo! and 3254/3277 in Leo minor.

So up to 384 now, surely there cannot be many more!

Also had a go again with the 76mm first scope with the 8mm Hyperion. It was fussy to get a sharp focus but when I achieved focus I managed to split cor coroli which is 11 arc seconds so pretty good. Managed to pick out M63,51,108 and 97 with averted vision. NGC 2841 was also obvious in the Plough.

Finally as I am sure everyone else does I turned both scopes on Saturn. The rings were sharp and very fine even in the 76mm scope. The bigh 10 inch was brighter but not much more detail and the planet was still below 30 deg of evelation.

A lovely rare sharp moonless night..

Mark