Serious fun at Plettstone, 16 June

by Jamie Dillon

Chased galaxies in Leo, Leo Minor and Ursa Major, with the skies to the West nice and dark, picking up the galaxies I still hadn't seen out of DeepMap. Of course the skies in those woods are full of galaxies, so picked up some strays as well. The most interesting one was ngc 3504, yes a DeepMap galaxy, a face-on spiral with a bright core, and arcs of dark lanes around the core.

This was all in Felix, a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with optics made by Discovery Telescopes. Was using a 22 Pan, 16mm UO Koenig, 10mm and 6mm Radians. No Barlow and no filters that night. The limiting magnitude after moonset was 6.2, and the seeing was good, 4/5, thru the night. Albert and I got matching starcounts in Bootes, which was encouraging.

The hop stars I was using for several of these galaxies are the Alulas, no kidding, Alula Borealis and Alula Australis, in southern Ursa Major. I wouldn't lie to you, they're nu and xi UMa. And they're not far SE of the Tanias, lambda and mu UMa. They're named like this in SkyAtlas.

The big excitement was seeing the Draco Dwarf for the first time. I'd been waiting for the right occasion to find this one more object in our Local Group. It's a small irregular galaxy, far enough away, at 3 million ly, that it's not a satellite of either the Milky Way or M31.

It's right off the head of Draco, and big in the eyepiece. A degree long and a half degree wide. Took some camping out at the 22 Panoptic to get hold of the shape and orientation of the thing. It runs east-west, looks like a lucency in the field. Moving the scope away in any direction, and the field got darker and the stars were more distinct.

That makes 14 galaxies in the Local Group I've seen. Stay tuned for DDK's guide to the neighborhood. Still have to see the Magellanic Clouds (some eager anticipation there!). And the WLM and the Cetus Dwarf just might be possible in my scope, maybe on a good night at CalStar.

Thanks to Michelle and Paul for their kind hospitality. They deserve their reputation as genial hosts. And thanks for listening,

DDK