Quote:
Originally Posted by Paddy
The PGC hunter hunts them down and how!
Great observations Sab. I have no idea how you see a mag 15.7 galaxy in light polluted skies with a 12" scope. Brilliant. And so much detail in such faint things.
And of course superb sketches.
They could probably save a fair bit of money on VLTs etc by just giving you a 22" scope in some dark skies, a pencil and piece of paper.
BTW how do you navigate/what do you use to select and find targets?
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Thanks Patrick. To see the real faint stuff I use a black hood on my head which works really well for blocking out local light pollution. Magnification helps, it increases the darkness of the background sky aiding contrast, so I find magnifications of 350-400x to be superior to 250x or so, even in poor seeing, when hunting very small very faint galaxies. This particular galaxy is a compact high surface brightness elliptical so that helps see it. YOu also need to take your time scanning the field, a short glance won't do.
I use the Millenium star atlas and I print off DSS images of the objects I'm looking for which helps pin point the locations of these faint buggers. Knowing the *exact* location is critical and concentrating your gaze there otherwise you won't see nothing.