Salutations celestial sight seers I'm David fuller welcome to eyes on the sky. What's up this week?
well, I promised that we would start looking at some galaxies and I have a couple for you that you can start looking for and
the
Part of the sky that we're gonna look in is towards the southeast if you're in the northern hemisphere
and as you can see from this particular graphic well
We've got all those winter things heading off there towards the southwest and kind of in the south
So this way to the southeast we have Leo the Lion
And we pull up our constellation shapes we can see how Leo is right here
the bright star of Arcturus is gonna be off towards the east that's gonna you arc to
Arcturus from the handle of the Big Dipper or the Plough
towards Arcturus and if you look between where Arcturus is over here and
Say Procyon over here. Leo is gonna be in the middle and Regulus is actually the brightest star in Leo
It's a first magnitude star. Although it's on the low end a first magnitude about a 1.4
magnitude and
To look for this particular constellation you kind of what I do is first thing I do is look for the backwards question mark shape
Or some people call it the sickle and you can find it here because this is sort of like the lion's mane
where his head is at and then this would be his you know for a paw or
Shoulder or something. We're gonna look here towards the hind legs particularly these two stars
The tail is Denebola over here, but we're gonna look at Zosma
Which is Delta Leonis
but most
importantly Theta
Leonis which is also known as Chertan and
if we kind of zoom in on that area, actually, let's
Imagine that we're looking at that area to get familiar with it using some binoculars
So if we look at this area with binoculars
You can see there's Chertan right here. And then there is going to be a 5th magnitude star
down here called Eta
Leonis you'll notice that we have three galaxies
right close by to there now it would seem like we could just do a simple star hop and go oh!
Chertan to Eta and right over there
Sure, that seems easy except galaxies are faint
And they're not always easy to see especially in more light polluted area. So the more light polluted it is the more difficult
It's going to be
to see these galaxies so a couple things are gonna help you one darker skies, so
If you're looking at this
Try to do it when the moon is not in the sky
You can also use averted vision which I will talk about later as well as another technique first
Let's find these so we are going to go from Chertan. And actually you can use Zosma kind of as your
line, so if you've with that seven degrees field of view that we typically have in a finderscope you'll be able to see Zosma and
Chertan together
We're gonna kind of go along that same line that will help you get to Eta
Leonis and you'll have both those stars in the same field of view
So that's not too difficult. Even though Chertan is a
Fainter third magnitude star because it's three point three
And even Eta Leonis is a fainter fifth magnitude star. It's five point three, but
Look for those again using binoculars to get yourself kind of in that area and know where to look
block any outside lights if you need to and then
Here's how I find these galaxies
There is a little what I call a fishhook
shape of stars now don't get off track because I know finder scopes reverse the field of view left and right and
Upside down for a lot of them
So you're gonna see a number of stars in here that may look like you need to go in the right direction
But if you're going with Zosma to Chertan you won't get confused, so there's this star over here
Which is a six magnitude star this one, which is a 7th magnitude star
We're going to the brighter one fifth magnitude Eta Leonis and that's in the direction you get these fishhook stars, which is 7th magnitude
And 7th magnitude and this is a little fainter at 8th magnitude
And then this one back over here is a 7th magnitude star. You should be able to see most of those in most finder scopes
say 30 millimeters or larger the larger your finderscope the easier that's gonna be to see but once you have found those
now you're kind of in the right field of view so you can
Get yourself probably right about here, or if you want to if you can see this star
Which is a 7th magnitude star that's gonna get you even closer
but
Let's start from over here because that's gonna be our brightest almost our brightest one that we're gonna be able to start with
so if we then look through our
Telescope and I'm gonna do it in about a one point four
Degrees field of view because one degree is really tight. So use your widest longest focal length eyepiece
It's got a big apparent field of view and then we will see this
Now the fishhook used to be this way, and now it's this way. That's because I'm looking through a reflector telescope reflectors
are gonna tend to be the bigger telescopes that you've got available to have more aperture to be able to see these
So that's what's gonna happen. Is this fishhook is gonna look reverse, so don't let that throw you
Because binoculars are gonna show it differently
But this will be the same configuration that you would see in a typical
Finder scope provided you don't have a right angle or a correct image one. So here's this fishhook
You can see how at the end of it. We've got this double star right here
If we just kind of scoot our way over in on the fishhook side
We're gonna see this star that would that was that one that I said that's closer to where the galaxies are
We can now kind of bring that and say okay now, I know the galaxies are in my field of view
even if I can't see them, I know that they're there but
This star right here
might fool you
because
You're gonna think you're seeing the galaxy but that's actually a 10th magnitude star. So the 10th magnitude star could mess you up
But if you see that
Go ahead and center that and then start looking for the galaxies now
Here's how you do it
if
You're not used to looking for galaxies because they'll be faint if you can even see them at all and if you know you're in
The right spot, you know, you're there like you you followed all my steps and you've gotten there
You're like I see the tenth magnitude star Dave, but I don't see any galaxies. That's okay. Use averted vision
so averted vision is
looking
initially at the spot that you know that the galaxies are at but then look away from it but concentrate on
That spot where the galaxies are
Because what happens is is in the very center of the back of your eyes on your retina are the cones cones capture bright light
during the day and that's where you see color however for
Darker situations our eyes evolved so that we have rods outside of that the rods capture fainter
Light and they also capture motion very well, which is important to the next thing
So because of that motion when you look this way just a little bit that motion will help you pick out
some of that light from that
galaxy and
The motion will help you to see it
So look there look away. Look there look away
but keep focusing on that that averted vision will help you another way to do that is
To look at that spot and tap your telescope. Just gently just right by your eyepiece
even you can even grab the eyepiece a little bit just
Wiggle the telescope just a little bit to make the field of view
Move a little just a touch you don't have to do it a lot. Maybe like seriously this much
That's as far as you need to move it
So don't move it a lot. You don't want to be like moving the stuff out of the field of view
So move it a little bit like that. That's gonna do the same thing. It activates those rods in the
Retina of your eye so that you can sometimes see that faint
Light from those galaxies because they are faint. M65 is the brightest of the three
This is actually a Leo triplet, but it's the brightest so you can see magnitude ten point two
But that's if it was a point of light but it's spread out. So the surface brightness is thirteen point three
That's getting pretty faint
m66
I'm sorry, the surface brightness of m66 is a little bit more
Because it's a twelve point six
So don't.. again don't get confused because there's that star there but it is the slightly brighter galaxy my apologies there
I had that reversed but they're still somewhat faint and then if you want to you can come up here to NGC 3628 and
that one
Surface brightness of twelve point eight but the magnitude is nine point five
So it's not as bright
Therefore don't think that it's going to necessarily be brighter because that surface brightness is more. The magnitude is lower
See we got a magnitude nine here
That's nine point five and this is above nine so another point six degrees of magnitude whereas this is
magnitude ten
But oddly enough. This one's a little easier to see I think because the core is a little brighter
So here's what we can do for that
we're going to take off these well zoom back in and what I can do is I'm gonna turn on
Bears, okay. I wanted to show you the field of view without the galaxies in there
But I turned on like because I added this deep sky objects images
Function on
Stellarium and so m65 I think has a little bit brighter core m-66 feels a little bit
More spread out, but it's got that bright star. Well tenth magnitude star near it. So it seems like there's a brighter
Aspect to it, but I'm 65 to me showed up a little bit better and NGC 3628
You can see how it's not exactly showing a lot even though it says it's an active galaxy
These two are definitely gonna be the easier ones to see Hey Messier saw them first back in the 1700s
and we didn't really know about
NGC 3628 until much later
So that is the Leo triplet, but particularly m65 and m66 that you can see for galaxies
in the spring
That's all for this week. Keep your eyes on the sky and your outdoor lights aimed down so we can all see. What's up
I'm David fuller wishing you clear and dark skies
You