Hi PGC,
Great report as usual mate and good to see you are enjoying the renovated 'scope.
Well done on tracking down AGC 2052 in Serpens -- particularly on picking up PGC 54550. I observed a few of the galaxies in this cluster last month up in Mudgee (it is in Pt 12 of my last report) and these are very faint galaxies. One of the exciting things is considering (as best as our limited imaginations can) the awful distance to these things -- in this case closing on 500 million light-years. That is thrilling to me that we can see something that far away with a backyard 'scope.
Last weekend, I broke my own personal distance record for a "normal" galaxy --ESO 146-05 in Indus (part of AGCS 3827) which made the news recently:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=30801
Imagine that -- 1.4 billion light-years. It's impossible in a meaningful way, to get your head around 1 light-year (almost 10 trillion km) let alone 488 million of them -- or indeed 1.4 billion ly for that matter. Staggering, truly staggering! This is one of the things that really draws me (and many others) into deep sky observing.
Another thing I noticed when looking at this cluster but didn't mention in my report was that at x247, while I saw 5 definites I could be certain of and could identify, the whole background at that magnification looked "noisy" or grainy hinting there were a heap of others just beyond or at the threshold of vision. How many? Can't say. But to me that is what deep-sky is all about.
Re NGC 7090 -- a fav of mine too. That mag 13.5 star 2/3rds of the way out in the halo gave me a heart attack the first time I saw it about 20 years ago.
Thanks for taking the time to write it up for us
.
Best,
Les D