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The Ha regions in Barnards Galaxy
sjastro asks: I wonder if Barnard Galaxy's "Ring Nebula" is observable?
Answer: Yes but you gotta work for um. I was unable to see a ring and only detected glow in 18" dob. See below if curious.
From way up north here at +36 or so it is easily possible to right away spot the two Ha regions within the galaxy itself.
What you call the Ring from that picture is far fainter and a heavy duty challenge object (at least from up here where there is a lot of extinction) down to 6822.
That region was a goal for some mag 21.6 type skies for me this last August and here is what I pulled out of it with an 18" f/3.7 scope on a very nice night. For my ORs I measure in terms of field of view and then later transcribe from my sony recorder and put measurements in square brackets.
BarnardsGalaxy: 7/10fov [16'] x 4/10 fov [9'] Unfiltered shows the two northern H2 regions. The H2 region to lower left [W] of the other is brightest of the two unfiltered and both appear to bracket the glow one on either side of the north end of the glow in EW orientation to each other. 5mmNag 389x shows EW elongation of the brighter H2 region west of the other one. Looking for the very dim H2 regions we move co-linear west of the two H2 regions by their spacing to a field star. Now move 1/2 of this length to see the H2 regions. These are very dark targets that only present themselves in strained averted over 50% of the time that are closely spaced. Both Kevin and MarkW saw these as well.
Mark
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