#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.