NGC 5746, featured galaxy of the week

by Jamie Dillon

Coupla weeks ago, when wrapping up the Eye Candy List, I got onto ngc 5746 at the SE corner of Virgo. Turns out in my OR I misidentified it as 5726. That wasn't fair, it's a very cool galaxy, so here's a feature report on 5746 and its very interesting area of the sky.

The hop I always use to get to M5 is to take a line from Cor Caroli to Arcturus, then the same distance in the same direction straight down. Puts you right into the middle of Serpens. Unukalhai, alpha Ser, and its bright neighbor stars march in a line heading down NW-SE. Just off to the right, there are 3 fairly bright stars in a slanting row. The easternmost star (5 Ser, lefthand one this time of year from here) is your hop star for that amazing globular.

Thing is, all 3 of those stars make hops to cool objects. 110 Vir, the one in the middle, is right in the middle of the 5846 group. In my 11" there are 9 galaxies in a close actual group there. Get Albert Highe with more aperture there; he ran down several dozen.

Off the righthand star, 109 Vir, is our galaxy of the week, a cool long spindle with bright core, mostly edge-on, 8' long, with a lovely arc of stars to the North.

This galaxy has been featured in TAC OR's 7 times now, visited by the likes of George Feliz, Joe Bob Jardine, Matthew Marcus, Jane Houston Jones, Bill Schultz and ZZ bin Muller.

Schultz and ZZ waxed the most rhapsodic, respectively,
http://www.observers.org/reports/2001.04.16.html
http://www.observers.org/reports/99.07.14.3.html

That one line of 3 stars can make up the bulk of a night's observing. Clear skies!

(back to that report I've been skirting around)

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Posted on sf-bay-tac Apr 14, 2005 15:12:53 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Apr 18, 2005 21:53:41 PT