Zubenel
26-02-2019, 09:07 PM
PGC2185433 Astrofest 2018
I had arrived for Wednesday afternoon at Astrofest 2018. Skies were close to perfect each night . Come Friday evening we had had a great night of observing smashing out 6 straight hours observing with clear and cold conditions . At about 11:30pm high level strato-cumulous cloud rolled across the sky from the East . We waited around a while but conditions did not improve . The observing field was getting put to bed with every one on the observing field calling it a night . I thought I’d hedge my chances so I pulled the tarp over "Zamar" my 20" SDM pimped Dob after disengaging the servocat drives but left the power on which maintained the Argonavis guidance. We headed in. I had a cup of coffee and Joel my observing buddy crawling into bed . I started editing photos taken the previous night . Within 10 min Joel was cutting down a forest !! Out like a light . A hour and 30 went buy quickly at which time I poked my head out to find the Milky Way dazzling in the West ! You beauty ! Walking though the observing field was somewhat surreal with not a soul to share these amazing conditions . As I was pulling the tarp off Zamar my thoughts turned to what next to observe? . Naked eye Andromeda looked like a slash in the Northern Sky . Very Bright indeed . Putting the 20mm Nagler in I quickly saw that the transparency was excellent as I followed the duel dust lanes down to the H2 region NGC206. I’d never seen it brighter. At this point the idea of ticking off a bucket list object came to mind . A globular cluster or 2 of the Andromeda Galaxy was within possible reach. Using Sky Safari 5 Pro I chose 2 globs pretty close together but not superimposed on the Andromeda Galaxy to increase contrast and my chances of bagging these faint balls of gossamer .
Stepping up the magnification with the 9mm Nagler three 10.8 mag stars in a slightly offset line were easy way points to find my first Andromeda Gloular Cluster G352 . At mag 16.09 this was surprisingly easy which presented as a very small round non-Stella blob . I worked my way down to TYC 2805-0460-1 but saw with averted vision something very very dim , down and off to the right . I checked Sky Safari 5 Pro and blow me down with a feather , I had bagged PGC2184533 , a 17.51 galaxy. It wasn’t round which then let me know it wasn’t a globular cluster .! G351 was off to the left and at Mag 15.2 and easy to ID .
For all my my amazement and excitement of this achievement , I looked around to find anyone to share this monumental moment with but to no avail. No one was found. I would have liked to have this spec of gossamer verified but that was not to be ! Maybe next year ...
Visual astronomers of Qld Astrofest , you are on notice !
Post Script
After unsuccessfully searching for the distance of this galaxy using Simbad Data of it’s red shift ,Les Dalrymple kindly showed me how to calculate an approximate distance for what now turns out to be my most distant and faintest object I have observed to date.
With a redshift of Z=0.12557 those photons had travelled 1609 million light years in distance= One Happy Astronomer.:)
Published (with out edits) Feb 2019 BAS News Letter.
Cheers Wes.
I had arrived for Wednesday afternoon at Astrofest 2018. Skies were close to perfect each night . Come Friday evening we had had a great night of observing smashing out 6 straight hours observing with clear and cold conditions . At about 11:30pm high level strato-cumulous cloud rolled across the sky from the East . We waited around a while but conditions did not improve . The observing field was getting put to bed with every one on the observing field calling it a night . I thought I’d hedge my chances so I pulled the tarp over "Zamar" my 20" SDM pimped Dob after disengaging the servocat drives but left the power on which maintained the Argonavis guidance. We headed in. I had a cup of coffee and Joel my observing buddy crawling into bed . I started editing photos taken the previous night . Within 10 min Joel was cutting down a forest !! Out like a light . A hour and 30 went buy quickly at which time I poked my head out to find the Milky Way dazzling in the West ! You beauty ! Walking though the observing field was somewhat surreal with not a soul to share these amazing conditions . As I was pulling the tarp off Zamar my thoughts turned to what next to observe? . Naked eye Andromeda looked like a slash in the Northern Sky . Very Bright indeed . Putting the 20mm Nagler in I quickly saw that the transparency was excellent as I followed the duel dust lanes down to the H2 region NGC206. I’d never seen it brighter. At this point the idea of ticking off a bucket list object came to mind . A globular cluster or 2 of the Andromeda Galaxy was within possible reach. Using Sky Safari 5 Pro I chose 2 globs pretty close together but not superimposed on the Andromeda Galaxy to increase contrast and my chances of bagging these faint balls of gossamer .
Stepping up the magnification with the 9mm Nagler three 10.8 mag stars in a slightly offset line were easy way points to find my first Andromeda Gloular Cluster G352 . At mag 16.09 this was surprisingly easy which presented as a very small round non-Stella blob . I worked my way down to TYC 2805-0460-1 but saw with averted vision something very very dim , down and off to the right . I checked Sky Safari 5 Pro and blow me down with a feather , I had bagged PGC2184533 , a 17.51 galaxy. It wasn’t round which then let me know it wasn’t a globular cluster .! G351 was off to the left and at Mag 15.2 and easy to ID .
For all my my amazement and excitement of this achievement , I looked around to find anyone to share this monumental moment with but to no avail. No one was found. I would have liked to have this spec of gossamer verified but that was not to be ! Maybe next year ...
Visual astronomers of Qld Astrofest , you are on notice !
Post Script
After unsuccessfully searching for the distance of this galaxy using Simbad Data of it’s red shift ,Les Dalrymple kindly showed me how to calculate an approximate distance for what now turns out to be my most distant and faintest object I have observed to date.
With a redshift of Z=0.12557 those photons had travelled 1609 million light years in distance= One Happy Astronomer.:)
Published (with out edits) Feb 2019 BAS News Letter.
Cheers Wes.