#9 Grand Tour : 86 down 415 to go

 14th November 2020

    Despite all my years observing the night sky Lacerta is one of those constellations I never seem  to remember the exact location of. It is however home to a number of interesting deep sky objects and two of its open clusters make my Grand Tour top 500.  Both of these I observed visually with the 8"SCT f10 magnification x62.

NGC 7209  Viewed through intermittent gaps in the clouds, at one point it even started raining, I managed to do a quick and very rough sketch of this open cluster.  The brightest star in view is  magnitude 8 and orange in hue and lies at the north end of the cluster. The cluster stars themselves range from magnitude 9 down and form a kind of U or W shape open to the wsw. Many fainter stars are hinted at with averted vision and this cluster also contains a number of double stars. It is believed to be 3800 ly away and is about 30ly in diameter.

 NGC 7243  Magnitude 6.4 and about 21' in diameter. This open cluster is terminated to the south by a prominent pair of stars and fans out north in a rough V shape. A close double star lies at the mid point with the ssw component being slightly the brighter. There seems to be fewer fainter stars than seen  in  NGC 7209. The cluster is believed to be 2800ly distant. Looking through my records I last observed these two clusters 36 years ago in  November 1984 so I will try and find the sketches I did and compare them with these.

                                                           18th November 2020

   Tonight I thought I would try the Infinity camera with an old camera lens of mine of focal length 135mm f2.8 for some wider angle views. First up I viewed NGC 7000 the North America Nebula which despite its large size just about fitted in the field of view. However I messed up and failed to save the image so will return to it at a later date. I did manage to record the following five Messier Objects.

M39

                                                                                 

     M39   Open Cluster, Cygnus.   About  half a degree in diameter and visible to the naked eye from a dark sight.  Triangular grouping of  around 25 stars in a very rich milky way field. Seems to lie in  a dark relatively starless region in my image though on some other images I have seen  this is not the case. About 624 ly distant and 7 ly in diameter.

M110, M31 and M32.

M110  Dwarf elliptical galaxy, At magnitude 9.0 this is one of the brighter galaxies in the sky but of course is dominated by the neighbouring Andromeda galaxy of which it is a satellite. 23' x 11' in size with a well defined nucleus.                     M31   On the all to rare occasions I have been to a really dark observing site this galaxy is a truly breath taking sight with the naked eye. Spanning 3 x 1 degrees and magnitude 3.4 our closest large galactic neighbour is usually touted as the most distant visible naked eye object, though I think I got a sight of  slightly more distant M33 once. Under suburban skies only the bright nucleus can be seen even with a telescope. The video image brings out some nice detail with some dust lanes being visible. It is now believed to be a barred spiral galaxy like our own with a similar mass but larger in size.     M32 Bright magnitude 8.0 compact dwarf elliptical galaxy.  This satellite of M31  is thought to be the remnant nucleus of a spiral galaxy stripped of its outer disc during interactions with its neighbour. Visually and in the image this is exactly what it looks like and contrasts with M110.  

M33

  M33 The third largest member of the Local Group of galaxies and slightly more distant than M31.  This galaxy is considerably smaller  than the Milky way and  M31 as can be seen in the images. Several spiral arms are visible.

#8 Grand Tour: 79 down 422 to go

     Yes 79 + 422 = 501 and the Grand Tour is supposed to be 500 objects.. All will be explained later but first two more observations of Mars.

    This image was taken at 20:40 on the 3rd November. Syrtis Major is the most prominent dark feature extending northwards on the central meridian. The small south polar cap can be seen top right of the image. This is the stage of the martian seasonal cycle when a global dust storm often happens but no sign yet.

  This image was taken exactly one  ( Earth ) day later and Syrtis Major has not quite reached the central meridian demonstrating that a martian day is slightly longer than ours. These images are not as sharp as  I hoped with the seeing being slightly better than before, maybe I need to collimate the telescope optics.

     On the 4th November I observed ten more objects for the Grand Tour Project the first two in Aquarius.

M2  Certainly one of the best globular clusters visible from the northern hemisphere. 55,000 ly distant and 175 ly in diameter with an age of 13 billion years this is one of the oldest and largest globulars. The brightest stars are of the 13th magnitude and many fainter ones surround the bright core. This cluster is apparently a member of the "Gaia Sausage" the remains of a dwarf galaxy merged with the milky way.

    NGC 7009  The "Saturn Nebula" is a magnitude 8 planetary nebula discovered by William Herschel in 1782. Blue green oval with narrow ansae extending either side of the long axis which do indeed resemble saturns edge on rings. A lot of these small planetaries deserve a closer look with more magnification as they can show a lot of structure not seen at this scale.

NGC 7814

             We're heading to Pegasus now for the next eight objects.

   NGC 7814   Edge on spiral galaxy with bright central bulge and prominent dark dust lane bisecting the mid plane. Known as the "Little Sombrero" Dimensions are given as 5.5' x 2.3' and is about 40 million light years distant.

   M15  Magnitude 6.3 globular cluster similar in size and brightness to M2 . Bright core.

  NGC 7217  SAB near face on spiral galaxy. Magnitude 11 and 4' x 3' in size. The  image shows a bright nucleus surrounded by an oval haze.  This galaxy is unusual for having a population of stars that rotate in the opposite direction to the majority.

NGC 7320 & Stephan's Quintet

  NGC 7320  SA spiral galaxy, magnitude 13, 2'x1' in size.  A member of "Stephan's Quintet" though at a distance of 40 million ly is much closer than the other 4 at 300 million ly. On my image it is the oval smudge to the right of the interacting pair NGC 7318 A&B at the centre.  Magnitude 14 galaxies NGC 7319 and 7317 complete the group. I have been wanting to  observe this famous group for some time so its good to track it down at last, albeit with a  video camera.

   NGC 7321  My next object was supposed to be NGC 7331 but entered 7321 into the GOTO by mistake, but I am going to include it in the GT project anyway. Turns out the small oval smudge on my screen is a magnitude 13 barred spiral galaxy. This galaxy was host to a supernova in 2013.

NGC 7331 and friends.

 

  NGC 7331   This magnitude 10 spiral galaxy  has a bright core  and prominent dust lanes  and lies at an oblique angle to us. At a distance of 40 Mly  it  lies in the foreground of a more distant grouping of galaxies NGCs 7335.7336.7337 and 7340 seen to the left of 7331 in my image/. NGC 7320 just observed is close  by in the sky and at the same distance so the two may be associated.

NGC 7479

    NGC 7479  We all love a barred spiral galaxy and this magnitude11 example is one of the best. It is classified as a seyfert galaxy undergoing starburst and has a relatively small bright core. 

   NGC 7619  Small round  fuzzball  on my image and in same field of view as several other members of the Pegasus 1 galaxy group including NGCs 7626, 7631, 7623 and7611.  Would be interesting to take a deeper exposure of this cluster as many faint galaxies are just about visible.