{"id":2161,"date":"2016-04-02T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-02T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/?p=2161"},"modified":"2018-01-12T18:01:38","modified_gmt":"2018-01-12T18:01:38","slug":"march-2016","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.popastro.com\/deepsky\/march-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"March 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four section members sent in sketches and images of deep sky objects during March, 16 reports in total:\u00a0 11 images and 5 sketches.<\/p>\n

Dale Holt<\/strong> drew 2 galaxies, a galaxy pair and 2 planetary nebulae.\u00a0 First is M104 (the “sombrero” galaxy) in the constellation of Virgo.<\/p>\n

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M104<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NGC 4027 (also known as Arp 22), NGC 4361, and NGC 4782 & 3, are all in Corvus. M104 owes its popular name to the dark lane of dust and prominent central bulge.\u00a0 NGC 4027 owes its place in Arp’s catalogue of peculiar galaxies to the fact that one spiral arm has been drawn out in an encounter with a galactic neighbour.\u00a0 Planetary nebula NGC 4361 is unusual in that it has four lobes of ejected material, leading to speculation that there may be two stars inside, each producing a bipolar jet.<\/p>\n

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NGC 4027<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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NGC 4361<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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NGC 4782, NGC 4783<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dale’s fifth sketch is of a better known planetary nebula, NGC 2392 or the Eskimo nebula, in the\u00a0 constellation of Gemini.<\/p>\n

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NGC 2392<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

This magnitude 10 object has a high surface brightness and can be readily seen in small telescopes, but is quite small at about 50 arcseconds angular diameter, so a bigger telescope is needed to see the detail present.<\/p>\n

For these sketches Dale used a 505mm f3.5 Newtonian telescope, with a Watec 120N+ cooled video camera in place of an eyepiece.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mark Beveridge<\/strong> imaged 6 galaxies.\u00a0 M64 is the Black Eye galaxy, which has a very distinctive appearance due to a large band of light absorbing dust. It lies in the constellation of Coma Berenices.\u00a0 NGC 3938 is a face-on spiral in Ursa Major.<\/p>\n

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M64<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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NGC 3938<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mark’s next four images are:\u00a0 NGC 4228, an irregular galaxy in Canes Venatici containing large star forming regions;\u00a0 NGC 5033 also in Canes Venatici, which has an active nucleus, NGC 3972 in Ursa Major;\u00a0 and also in Ursa Major NGC 2841, a giant spiral galaxy noted for large numbers of young, blue stars but few HII regions.<\/p>\n

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NGC 4228<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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NGC 5033<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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NGC 3972<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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NGC 2841<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

David Davies <\/strong>sent in this image of open cluster M45, the Pleiades, in the constellation of Taurus.\u00a0 He captured 100 minutes each of red, blue and green in 5 minutes subframes, using a Skywatcher ED80 refractor (working at f5.3) plus a QSI583 mono camera and red, green, and blue filters.<\/p>\n

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M45<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

M45 is one of the nearest open clusters to the Earth, and is probably the easiest to identify without any optical aid.\u00a0 The luminous blue stars in the cluster illuminate the dust clouds around them, through which the cluster is passing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Steve Norrie <\/strong>sent in four images, all of galaxies.\u00a0 The first three are in the constellation of Ursa major: \u00a0 M108, M101 and M81 (also M82).\u00a0 The fourth image is of M106 is Canes Venatici.\u00a0 M108 is an almost edge-on barred spiral galaxy.\u00a0 M101 is better known as the Pinwheel galaxy;\u00a0 it is face -on to us so has a fairly low surface brightness.\u00a0 M81 is also known as Bode’s galaxy, and with M82 38 arcminutes away may be seen in the same field of view in 10 x 50 binoculars.\u00a0 M106 has an active nucleus and is classed as a Seyfert type II galaxy.<\/p>\n

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M108<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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M101<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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M81, M82<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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M106<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dave Finnigan<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four section members sent in sketches and images of deep sky objects during March, 16 reports in total:\u00a0 11 images and 5 sketches. Dale Holt drew 2 galaxies, a galaxy pair and 2 planetary nebulae.\u00a0 First is M104 (the “sombrero”Read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2161","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-reports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t