Section Members Dale Holt and Alan Clitherow submitted 7 drawings and 2 images respectively during the month.
This drawing of M77 was submitted by Dale on 6.01.1, from an observing session on 30.12.13. (Dale uses a 20″ Newtonian telescope, and draws what he sees on his Watec video camera screen.)
It shows M77, an active galaxy in the constellation of Cetus. At magnitude 8.8, it is the brightest Seyfert galaxy.
Also on 30.12.13, Dale observed Arp 123, (NGC’s 1888 and 1889), a small pair of galaxies in Orion, near the border with Lepus, quite low in the sky, so hard to see.
On 4.01.14, Dale observed three galaxies, the first is NGC 2683, in Lynx.
The second, is designated Arp 187 in Eridanus, a distant edge – on galaxy.
The third galaxy of the session is Arp 259, also in Eridanus, which is also known as NGC 1741, or Hickson 31, a compact group of galaxies.
On 20th January, Dale observed and drew the face-on spiral galaxy NGC 1954 in Lepus, magnitude 11.8, 4.2 x 2.0 arc minutes. As ever, objects in Lepus are low in the sky and tend to be difficult to see clearly.
Dale’s seventh drawing is of the recent Supernova in the galaxy M82 in Ursa major, and can be found on the Deep Sky Latest News Page, along with images by Alan Clitherow and the Deep Sky Director.
On 23.01.14, Alan Clitherow also imaged the emission nebula NGC 1499 in Perseus, also known as the California Nebula.
For this image he employed a Sigma 70-200mm zoom lens attached to a modified and cooled Canon EOS 100 DSLR camera.
Dave Finnigan