Quote:
Originally Posted by shelltree
Seeing as I was on a roll with galaxies, I decided to go for NGC5102. Once I got iota cen lined up in the eyepiece, it wasn't too hard to find  Very faint this one, almost just looks like a star but it's definitely got that fuzzy galaxy thing going on Woohoo, 3 galaxies in one night! No new objects but it was a chance to put my skills to practise again as I was very, very rusty! |
Shelley,
NGC 5102 is a remarkably tough object for visual observers, especially considering that its total visual magnitude is around 9.6!!
It is a
very extended object, so its extremely-diffuse and Low Surface Brightness appearance is equivalent to smearing a 9.6 magnitude star over a
large area of sky (about 9 by 3 arcminutes, or even larger to fainter levels of surface brightness)
So keep on trying!
I have been able to see the actual outline of this galaxy with 8-10 inches of aperture, but the sky needs to be very dark and very transparent.
In poorer skies, it is only possible to see the brightest & very centralmost part of this galaxy.
Admittedly, the below image of NGC 5102 is in the near-infrared, but because the stars in this galaxy are mostly old, a visual-wavelengths image would look similar.
This image is from the 2MASS survey, which were all short exposures;
in my view, this is a fair representation of what this galaxy would look like visually, under absolutely perfect conditions:
Cheers,
Robert