Title got your attention, didn't it? Now for the let-down: there is some amount of red-shift in the light from galaxies because they're distant (and they're marked by ovals filled with red on Sky Atlas 2000, too...). Last night was the second chapter of Matthew snooping around in Virgo from the PAS site on Oakridge Road.

Conditions were iffy early on, but much better later. When I got there, a fair amount of high cirrus were blowing in off the Pacific from the SW. Otherwise, there was only a light wind. After a modicum of darkness arrived, I started, or tried to start, from the eastern side of galaxy heaven (from Arcturus and hopping over) but this was frustrated by cirrus. So, it's over to Denebola and in from the west. This sort of worked, but when I got to the edges of the mass of galaxies, they were very hard to find. I could just barely see M99, and M98 not at all. Not an auspicious beginning, and it was due to more cirrus. Ah, well.

It was clear over by the Big Dipper, so I went there and spent a little time hunting up M97 and M108 (both showed nicely without clouds :-) but for the life of me could not find M109. Being by now suspicious of the sky, I looked to see if the cirrus had sneaked over into Ursa Major. No, but it seemed to have left Virgo, too.

Back on Plan! This time I started from the southerly part of galaxy heaven and went for M104 first. Easily found, bright, and showing a little of the dark central dust lane when the seeing was good. The cirrus were moving pretty fast and I suspect there was a fair amount of turbulence up high. The wind down where I was (save that whipped up by the mosquito hordes...) had died away by now and it was quite pleasant. Going from M104 NE to a double star, I looked for but did not find several galaxies which are around there (An3, 4742, 4760, etc). Figuring that conditions were probably not all that good, I headed quickly up to where more of the Messier galaxies were, via gamma, eta, and 16 Virgo. M61 showed up very well between 16 and 17 Virgo. Noting that there was a clot of galaxies around 17 Virgo, I went there next and found 4324 on one side of 17, 4270 and 4273 (but not 4281, which is right with them) on the other side, and then got 4261, but not 4260, a little further beyond 4270/4273. All of these galaxies were faint grey puffs without any detail and took some care to see.

Conditions were decidedly improving. Seeing had steadied out significantly and the cirrus had essentially vanished from the sky. Next up was M49, which was easy to find and showed hints of detail. Because 4526 was easily located (right between two stars) I looked for and found it. This fellow was surprisingly bright. 4469, a couple of stars over, was very iffy and (if I did see it) very faint. Not trusting myself that much on extrapolating too far from the widely scattered stars, I went next to the 27-30 star pair and looked for 4608 and 4596 right nearby. Both showed up as delicate little grey puffs.

Using the 27-30, and 34-41 star pairs as direction markers (they're almost orthogonal! Basis vectors in space...), I went for the M59, M60 pair next. Again, these showed easily with hints of detail. 4638, more or less between them, was also readily evident (no details, though). 4647, which is almost on top of M60 (2.5 arc-min away), was not visible. Maybe the "glare" of M60 swamped it out :-) :-) or perhaps the fuzzy puffs merged enough into each other that I interpreted the whole thing as M60. Given the sizes reported in Burnham, that could be the case (any pertinent comments from more experienced galactic observers on this?). There being a paucity of stars, I used M60 and M59 as pointers to galaxy hop to M58. Popped right into view, also with some hints of structure to it.

At this point, I was feeling sated with galaxies and decided to go on a tour of the bottom of the teapot in Sagittarius. The attraction here is a number of globulars. Started at epsilon-Sag. and starhopped easily to M69 to the NE (Starhopping is much easier when there are stars to use; the contrast to hopping in Virgo was amazing.). Next, down a chain of stars, was 6652. This seems to me to be equally as bright as either M69 or M70. Continuing along the bottom of the Teapot toward zeta-Sag, M70 was next, also easy to find and a nice little view, and M54 completed the sweep. All of these globulars are easy to find, fairly bright but also fairly small; they don't resolve much in my 8" SCT. Once at zeta-Sag, I headed south into Corona Australis to get 6723 (similar to the others mentioned, but somewhat smaller). Nearby the chart shows some small nebulosities. I found two of the three listed, probably 6727 and 6726, but didn't see 6729. Each the visible ones seemed to surround a faint pair of stars.

Last stop of the night was M55, back up in Sagittarius. This is a big, bright globular. It also doesn't "look like" most globulars because it doesn't "seem" to have a central core. The appearence is more like a very busy open cluster (vaguely like 7789 in Cassiopeia). Wondering why it was so unusual, I looked up M55 in Burnham's: "Early observers commented on the unusual 'openess' of this cluster, and found the center so little compressed that individual stars could be counted easily, with apparently blank sky between. This impression is due to the fact that only a relatively small percent of the members exceed a brightness of 13th-14th magnitude and the cluster does not 'fill in' until 17th where a vast swarm of stars suddenly appears...". Perhaps the fact that it is seen with the Milky Way as a background has some visual effect as well.

That was it for the evening. Even though the seeing was now very steady, and the Milky Way was shining seductively across almost the whole vault of the heavens, I was tired and starting to sense eyestrain. It was harder than usual to get myself to go, though.