by Steve Gottlieb
Speaking of hunting the wrong object, I decided on Thursday to take a look at the distorted "Tadpole Galaxy" in Draco which the HST recently imaged with its new "Advanced Camera for Surveys" against a background of a sea of faint galaxies. Although this is an Arp galaxy (Arp 188 = UGC 10214), I haven't read much in terms of amateur observations. Anyways, when I located what I thought was the field, the galaxy seemed awfully dim. I did have Ray Cash and Jim Shields verify the sighting (and get a peak at what I thought was the Tadpole)
17.5" (8/8/02): extremely faint, very small, round, 20" diameter, low surface brightness and requires averted vision. Located 0.9' NNW of a mag 13.5 star and 2.6' SE of a mag 11 star.
Just another great HST galaxy which is a bust visually? I made a small sketch of the 220x field but when I later compared the sketch to the DSS I discovered I had picked up MCG +09-26-052 which is located 12' NNW of the Tadpole! Unfortunately, the 220x (8.8 Meade Ultrawide) has a 21' field, so the real (brighter) Tadpole must have been just outside the field. Normally, I would have picked it up anyways by just drifting around in the area, but I was tracking using an equatorial platform, so MCG +09-26-052 just stayed fixed in the field. Oh, well...