For a while I have been wanting to observe those galaxies in Virgo that have been mentioned so much. However, various circumstances have kept me from taking the scope out into the field; so, I got up at 0300 this morning to take a look from my westward-facing balcony.

Seeing was steadier than I had experienced on most of this year's winter nights. I calibrated the polar alignment and ASCs (Analog Setting Circles) using Spica and Denebola. Regulus was too far down in the haze for naked-eye but the scope showed it to be at about the right place. I then aimed at where M84 should be and saw nothing that resembled a galaxy. I searched the area between Denebola and Vindemiatrix for a long time but still found no galaxies. I was using an 8" SCT at 78x and my references don't tell me how big these objects are. Was that a reasonable magnification (resulting in about a 25 minute field of view) for M84 and neighboring galaxies? I suspect that the real problem was that the environment (mid-town San Mateo) was too bright for viewing these objects.

While I was up, I noticed another constellation that I later identified as Scorpius (after morning came and I was able to dig for the book without waking my bride). A brief scan of it revealed what appeared to be a double star at 16:22, -25.5 which appears to be Sigma Scorpius. Is this listed anywhere as a double? The dim companion is slightly west of Sigma probably by a few tens of arcseconds at most.