Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterM
Was good to talk with you Sab, I got a real sense of your excitement and enthusiasm for astronomical discovery, that is very encouraging to us "older" blokes. I will have great pleasure in taking an image of this for you and cross my fingers.
As a matter of interest I have attached a scan of NGC1399 from the Thompson & Bryan Supernova Search Charts. You will note there is a star on the NE edge of the galaxy and by the magnitudes listed at bottom it would be about mag 13.5-14 but is this the one that Sab is seeing? maybe, but we should never just assume, there have been missed discoveries because an observation was not questioned or followed up.
As Sab has gone to the trouble of presenting us with the challenge I think it would be a good exercise for the visual observers who are suitably equipped to also have a squizz at NGC1399 and we can then all present our reports and images (and perhaps a visual discovery to Sab) in this thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidU
Not meaning to speak on Sabs behalf but he is in a rather light polluted area and said that he couldn't get NGC 1396 as it was too dim. So the object that Sab saw mush have been a fair bit brighter.
"I actually attempted to find NGC 1396 and couldn't see it - too faint. This was a point source which I saw".
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No probsa David... NGC 1396 was invisible to me, I'd estimate this "star" as around Mag 14.
PeterM. |
G'day Peter,
mag 13.5-14 is well within my reach, it could well be the star I saw. On one image I looked up it showed a star very close to the galaxy's nucleus in the position I described, but it looked much fainter than a couple of 15th mag stars (a 3rd was 12th mag) I saw rougly halfway to NGC 1387 - and also much closer to the nucleus which IMO would've been impossible to split given my aperture and sky conditions. And 15th mag is very close to the limit from my location and aperture.