Which 3 galaxies are these?

[cybereye (Mario)]

A puzzle from last Friday night....

Attached is a picture of 3 galaxies I took while searching for M104. Now a bit of background as to how I ended up in this part of the sky.... To ensure that I get my go-to in the right spot, I have downloaded an excel spreadsheet which does a precise go-to. You type in the RA/DEC for an object you know and can see and do the same for the object you are after. Then you get your scope to go-to the object, centering in with the hand controller. I then use the Show Position function and it shows me where it thinks the scope is pointing. You then type in these values into the spreadsheet and it will tell you where you need to move the scope to find the object you are after.

Simple!!

So using Spica which I could see I typed in the true value and my scope value to get a value where M104 should be. However in the dark I typed some incorrect values into the spreadsheet and was "sent" to this part of the sky. I took a quick 2 minute image, saw what I thought was a galaxy, but checking the spreadsheet realised my mistake. I then corrected my error and zeroed in on M104.

Over the weekend after trying to get something out of my M104 data, I had a look at this single image and to my surprise realised I'd imaged 3 galaxies!! Of course I can't remember the exact co-ordinates that I was at but think I was in the Virgo super-cluster near M58, M59 or M60. However when I try to match up with images of those I just can't seem to do it!

So my question is, can someone please help me determine which galaxies I've imaged in the attached image. I've made it into a negative so that the galaxies show up easier.

Cheers,
Mario

[Stu Ward]

Being So close together are they the Leo Triplets ?

Stu

[cybereye (Mario)]

Originally Posted by Stu Ward

Being So close together are they the Leo Triplets ?

Stu

That's what I thought originally but they don't match the images on the web...

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Mario,

Have you got a positive version less stretched and without the annotations? uniMap's detection algorithm is having problems with the background noise and I can't bump the black point without losing most of the stars.

I gather this was taken with your K-m (sensor 23.5x15.7 mm) on the Newt (1200mm f/6). If this is the whole frame that makes it 67x45 arcmin.

Andrew

[cybereye (Mario)]

Andrew,

Here's the full frame - reduced for size considerations.

Cheers,
Mario

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Mario,

With a bit of image tweeking astronomy.net solved it. It is centred at 12:40:19.650, -5:14:32.367 and my size estimate proved very close -
66.69 x 44.59 arcminutes.

Given that I could then tell uniMap NGC4593 was in frame it gave the overlay attached.

You have 21 deep sky objects in frame. 3 NGC objects, 1 IC and 17 PGC galaxies.

Andrew

[cybereye (Mario)]

Amazing!!

And to think I only imaged my first galaxy 1 month ago. And here I am taking 21 galaxies in one go!! Thanks Andrew for your help with this little puzzle - now that I have coordinates I might have to revisit this part of the sky with my trusty camera...

Cheers,
Mario