We'd love you to take part in the August Observing and Imaging Challenge. Please post your reports, sketches and deep-space images of NGC5189 in this thread. Discussions about the images can also be in this thread.
Please ensure the images obey the posting guidelines when you attach them.
While it would be nice if the report, sketch or image were taken in the month of August, it's not essential so feel free to post older reports and images if you're unable to take some new ones.
This is one of my all time fave "strange" objects for viewing with a small telescope. It is quite easy to pick up even from suburban sites (mag 5.5 limit) and if you know where to look it is quite easy to spot even in a 15x70 tripod mounted binoculars. But to see this object well you need to employ a nebular filter (I use the Lumicon UHC) and a magnification of about 75x and above to see shape and structure. The first time I saw this was through Kev's 16" truss dob at Leyburn where he dubbed it the "leafy seadragon" planetary. That term will always stay with me although some also call it the spiral planetary (and it does look like a spiral galaxy with its arms). Definately one to check out. See my sketch:
I have observed 5189 several times before. However, this is the first time I have spent a lot of time on it. I spent about 1 hour on it tonight. I used our 8" F6 stringscope Dob. Both seeing and transparency were down tonight, perhaps 5/10 for both. Also humidity was quite high with significant dew on the scope after 1 hour.
I was not sure what sort of view I would get, not only due to the seeing but also as 5189 was well past the zenith and descending into the light glow from a couple of major shopping centres.
I used a 32mm "finder" eyepiece to locate it, which was fairly easy as it is quite bright and located between 2 stars mag 6 & 7.5there. In the "finder" eyepiece (38X) it appeared as a small elongated, almost rectangular, patch of light. As it is a fairly bright PN and should take magnification well, I changed eyepieces to 212X. At this magnification I could see a main bar of nebulosity running E-W. At the East end of this bar it broadens out into a round patch twice as thick as the bar and offset to the South. The West end of the bar appears to terminate in a short hook to the North. I could easily see a single star offset from centre to the West. I assume this is the mag 11 star. Using averted vision there were hints of additional star/s although they were so tenuous it could have been my imagination.
NOTE I could easily have got this orientation WRONG as I have never bothered to learn the orientation of the cardinal points versus direction of movement in the eyepiece. I have assumed the Western side is the "leading side". I hope someone will let me know if I have got it wrong.
I then tried using a prism to see if I could detect the stars. Unfortunately there was too much stray light for this to work well although I could make out the image of the nebulosity in the prism. This will have to wait for a deep sky night.
I kept the same magnification and added a UHC filter. The contrast increased (and the mag 11 star virtually disappeared)and I now noticed with averted vision (particularly when gently moving the scope) the central bar appeared to be surrounded by an oval haze only slightly longer than the central bar and width about 3/4 of the length. While the contrast had increased I could not notice much additional detail in the way of structure in the central bar.
Dido Ian and Darren,nice report and nice sketch ! this is one of those objects that looks good in all scopes and handles magnification well . When viewed through large apeture you can see how It got Its nickname the Spiral nebular .
Looks like a leafy seadragon too Kev of SAS gave 5189 that nickname and I think I like it better than the spiral planetary. However you need some serious aperture to appreciate its leafy structure (quite amazing in his 16"). In smallish scopes it looks more like just a bright spiral galaxy.
Hi all
Heres my newest effort, taken last night.
[IMG]http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3452&st c=1
2 x 10 mins with the Baader UHCS filter, 10 inch F5.6 newt, EOS 300D.
Scott
Very nice. I noted the extended nebulosity around the central bar in astro_south's 12.5" at the Astrofest on Sat so it is nice to get vindication for my observation.
I have one from back in March last year taken with the C11 at 4800mm during a very nice week of seeing. I probably won't get around to imaging it again this time, so I hope this old pic is ok. It's a very difficult object to image ! This one was about my 6th attempt over the last 8 years and came out the best. Well done to all who've managed to image it so far!
Ah Eddie you make us all look bad Anyway awesome shot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No no I hope not. It's just different experience and equipment levels. I have some images of this that are far worse than all of those posted here so far, I just choose to post the best ones
good one Scott ! now I can see It.
