The Circinus Galaxy, ESO 97-G13, is a pretty bright galaxy, but its galactic latitude is low, so a sightline to it passes through lots of foreground Milky Way.
It's also a southern hemisphere object (Dec ~-65° 20′), so it cannot be seen if you're in Europe or North America.
Has anyone seen it? Taken an image of it? If so, would you mind sharing your experiences?
There's a thread here on it - Circinus Galaxy, which starts with what might be an observation of it, but I can't get the link to open!
(I hope this is the right place to ask such a question).
Nice Galaxy.
Been a number of years since I did any visual astronomy but my notes indicate that in my old 37cm Dob ESO97-13 (Circinus Dwarf Galaxy) was an easy target from 25km South of BrisbaneOther notes I have are that it was discovered in 1977 from Mt stromlo observatory. That it is app 11 million light years distant. Hartungs second edition notes it as H631 and there is a pic on page 209.
Aka PGC50779 this galaxy is included in my Supernova Search programme and I have many 30 second images of it. When I get home later I will attach one, mind you mine are only monochrome and not a Mona Lisa painting. I am sure there must be others here who can do more justice to this neat galaxy.
PeterM
I am particularly interested in your visual experience (images with modern detectors are also very interesting too, of course).
If you didn't know it was there, would you have noticed it, would you say?
Yeah, yeah, I know; conditionals like this are tricky, if not impossible, to answer, but ...
My visual was some years ago so memory is not so good other than my notes. Even though I was able to view just South of Brisbane I was using a 14.5 inch F5.2 Dob with Galaxy Optics so aperture will certainly help. I just noticed there is a thread under Deep Space on this object and Ron Knight (astroron) gives an account of this object, noting "it looks like an obscure globular" and he uses a large 16inch Dob.
Always worth hunting these and using averted vision on a dark night and with a bit of luck...
PeterM.
Attached is a wikisky.org image showing alpha Circinus on the left and the Circinus galaxy (PGC 50779) on the right (west) - they are 3.1 degrees apart.
The galaxy is visual mag 10.5 and its size is 7.4' x 3.1'. It forms a rough isosceles triangle with alpha and beta Centauri.
See also http://personal.inet.fi/surf/deepsky/pgc50779_au.htm
Starry Night has it 7.2 x 1.7 arcmins and mag 12.01. Wikipedia has it 6.9 x 3.0 arcmin and mag 12.1. Discovery paper has it 17 x 5 arcmin, total magnitude 9.8. Magnitudes are not necessarily at major odds, reflecting various quoted sizes of what is a largish diffuse object. At those sizes & magnitudes I don't think I'd see anything in my small scope.
What I do notice on Starry Night though is that the galaxy seems to be overlain by a string of tiny Milky Way star clusters and you'd have to be certain you're not just picking up the glow from them.
Saw the core of the Circinus galaxy this morning with a 16" scope using a 13mm (140x) and an 8mm (225x) EP.
The core was very faint and there were 4 or 5 stars in it. The outer part of the galaxy was not visible.
The attached image is from wikisky.org
I wonder how many amateurs saw this galaxy, before Freeman et al. discovered it, and thought to themselves "hmm, that looks rather like a galaxy" (I doubt any amateur imaged it, before 1977)?
The Circinus Dwarf captured my imagination some time ago. I read that we could only see it due to a tunnel in the Milky Way's dust. Otherwise extinction would make it impossible.At Mag 10.5 one would think that it would have been easy to bag in ATM 10".
On the contrary , transparency has to be 8 to 8.5+ to grab this one in adverted vision. Many nights of small disappointment when not seen in the crowded star field. Need a 20" me thinks
The Circinus Dwarf captured my imagination some time ago. I read that we could only see it due to a tunnel in the Milky Way's dust. Otherwise extinction would make it impossible.At Mag 10.5 one would think that it would have been easy to bag in ATM 10".
On the contrary , transparency has to be 8 to 8.5+ to grab this one in adverted vision. Many nights of small disappointment when not seen in the crowded star field. Need a 20" me thinks
I have observed the Circinus galaxy many times over the years after reading one of David Malin's books.
I first oserved it in a 20cm (8") about 15 years ago,so no need of a 20" scope to see it only clear sky's and looking in the right place
Cheers
This northern boy has only had the opportunity to observe it once in an 18-inch, but it was surprisingly easy --
18" (7/5/05 - Magellan Observatory): the Circinus Dwarf is a highly obscured, nearby (13 million light years) spiral galaxy only 4 degrees from the galactic plane and was discovered in 1977 on a Mt. Stromlo Schmidt plate as part of an atlas of Milky Way nebulae. At 128x, I was surprised to find it was immediately visible as a moderately bright, 30" roundish glow with a fairly even, high surface brightness surrounded by a dense mat of stars. As this galaxy is situated in a very rich star field, the core of the galaxy mimics a planetary in terms of size and surface brightness and appears strangely out of place in this setting. At 228x, there was a strong impression of a much fainter outer halo oriented SW-NE, ~2'x1' in size, particularly using averted vision. Just off the SW side (1' from center) is a mag 12 star, comparable in brightness to the galaxy and a number of additional mag 11-12 stars are within a few arc minutes of the galaxy.
One of the guys in our group last weekend is big on galaxies and I was able to see the Circinus Galaxy through his 14" SCT. It looked typical except it was embedded in a dense star field, as so many of you mention. We were observing from the tip of the Florida peninsula, where we can see a lot of the Southern sky.
Ed ,
Great to here our Northern brothers can sample, if not at low altitude , our Southern skies. What I I should of said was "Me thinks it would take a 10" as I have seen this little gem" Cheers Zubenel
