Smallest and faintest?

[Ags]

What is the smallest and faintest thing you have seen?

I spotted Tethys last night with my 102mm Mak - I marked it's position in a sketch, and then checked Stellarium afterwards to see if anything was at that location.

Tethys is magnitude 10.7 and 1050km in diameter. Saturn is quite low, so I guess Tethys is actually shining below 11th magnitude.

I've also resolved some of the stars in M13, which are around 12th magnitude, but those are not named objects of course.

[Manok101]

The ghost of Jupiter, or the Eskimo nebula would be my smallest. Faintest thing I've seen a few hard to see clusters and stars. M13 is quite a sight as well

[Catanonia]

mmm, maybe the flaming star nebula.... But it was after 8 hours of exposures.....

Is that cheating ???

[John]

I managed to catch the supernova SN2011b earlier this year first with my 10" newtonian and a couple of days later with my 6" refractor. That was around magnitude 12.8 I think when I saw it. The galaxy it occurred in (NGC 2655) is around 65,000,000 light years away so when the supernova happened there were dinosaurs still on the Earth.

My other favourite "spot" in this category is Saturns moon Enceladus which I've see with my 10" newtonian. It's a 12th magnitude object but only 500km in diameter so a tiny object a long way away !.

Stuff like this does not look much in the eyepiece but it's hugely significant in your mind as you put it into context

[Ags]

Update: the past couple of nights I have also spotted Iapetus, shining at mag 11.7 according to Stellarium. Iapetus is much bigger that Tethys or Dione, but it is often much fainter.

I believe Iapetus has the first surface feature to be discovered on a satellite beyond the moon - the dark region covering half the moon is named after its 17th century discoverer, Cassini.

[Doc]

A globular cluster that resides in the Andromeda Galaxy called G1( Mayall 11), It's magnituse is 13.7.