Fremont Peak, April 20, 2009: One Whale and a Paisley Trail

Mark Johnston

Yesterday, Monday April 20, 2009, I went on up to Fremont Peak to see if the thin stuff may clear. It did but took till 10:30. Temperatures were very comfortable and did not require hardly any bundling up. After the clearing the skies remained 80% open and best overhead and south. North of the dipper was mostly un-workable but that was ok as I wanted overhead and south mostly.

While waiting a group of 8 or so people who had been hiking all over the Santa Cruz area came by looking for views. Showed them Saturn and Leo triplet before they got bored and wandered off to their camp. I think they liked it and one or two may have been fairly curious.

Spent most of the clear part of the night hunting down 3000 series Herschel 400 list 2 objects and really had a productive time of it once things got acceptable after 11pm.

Here are some highlights that were not from that list but are fun targets.

Paisley Trail:
This is what I call a nice trail to follow which if you connect the dots looks like a giant outline of a Paisley
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisley_(design)

Start at M84 which is the tip of the Paisley and work on through M87, 4438/4435 and 4461/4458 pairs. Move on through the Markarian Chain 'J' to 4473, 4477 and 4459. I will omit some lesser galaxies along this path. At this point we are at the start of the outside convex part of the paisley pattern and move on to 4468/4474 then M88, 4516, M91, 4571. We now continue this outside loop with M90, M89 and on to M87, 4478/4476, 440/4436/4431 then back to the starting tip of the paisley through 4413, 4388, 4387 and back to M84.

See if you can follow all this with just scope movement and keep track of where North is so you follow this image in your head and yes, Uranometra closeup A13 or other chart will come in handy to not get lost and to 'picture the paisley'.

And now for something completely different: 'A whale playing hocky' Find Ngc4631 which is a HUGE 13' length E-W elongated galaxy with lots of irregularities and a larger part to the east which is the head. Right next to it is Ngc4627 along the back for a ride.

Just a half degree S-E is Ngc4656 or the 'Hockey Stick' galaxy. This is interacting with what I call 'The Puck' or Ngc4657 on the NE side. The hocky stick itself warps towards the puck and I had trouble separating the two last night for any length of time mostly because of non-ideal transparency I suspect.

So check these out sometime as they are all nicely placed this time of year.

Clear Skies,
MarkJ