Salutations celestial sight seers I'm David fuller welcome to eyes on the sky. What's up this week?
last week we were in leo, and we were looking at a couple of
the galaxies - actually three of the galaxies - by the kind of the hind legs of
The lion so if we're back here in Leo, this is kind of where we were starting at this start Chertan
we're gonna start again at that star because I think that's the easiest way to get to our next group of galaxies that we're gonna
look at for this week, which is actually
or galaxies
and we will
do our best to
Start hop there and try to do it a couple different ways cause a couple of them are easy
One of them is not easy and then another one's easier
so
Let's take a look at where we are
Back here closer to Denebola - not closer to Regulus
We're gonna start here at this star Chertain so use your magnified finder scope definitely to get going
Here's the lower half of Leo
Chertan is here. We're gonna take off our constellation lines
we have a better sense of what we're actually looking at and then let's go ahead and
Look at it as if it's a binocular field of view so that 7° field of view that we typically get so there are seven
By fifty binoculars here's where we were at last week, but we need to go this direction instead
so
The way that you kinda want to do that is you're gonna want to go kinda towards where Regulus is
in this
general direction
But the problem is is that
These galaxies are actually not gonna show up like that. So let me actually bring these back down kind of out of the way
Even the labels of markers will kind of do that
These are the stars that you're looking for
So you can see how they're actually a little further out
Than even the the field of view is so if we watch those kind of go away
There's Chertan just barely over there. So what are we using to kind of align us see this star right here?
That's 81 Leonis you can use that and there's actually you can see there's kind of 3 stars... 6 stars...
6 Stars lined up that sort of help with this
These two stars and these two stars and these 2 stars. They all kind of point in the direction that we want to go
So you can sort of use all of those if you have Chertan kind of in that field of view. Don't get confused by these
but these ones definitely these to
Chertann is really gonna be the way you do that. So do this and just draw that line out I keep going
So go all the way over there see Chertan, just leaving our field
We were still going the same way and there's those two stars and these are fairly bright
We're looking at a five and a half magnitude star there
this one down here is
A 5.3 magnitude star so they're very similar in brightness
You're gonna want to split that difference and you probably will be able to see this star which is a seventh magnitude star
I could just barely make out that one
sort of
averted vision
But this one is really the one that's gonna help you because you're gonna wanna kind of focus in on that now
Let's look through our telescope at about a 1 degree field of view. So we know that what we're looking at
All right, so there is almost exactly a 1 degree field of view. Well a little bit more than that, maybe
about a 1.1 degree field of view, but that's close enough
There's we've centered that star and you can see how the galaxies are gonna be in your field of view then
This one right here. Actually, I'm sorry
These actually show up interestingly as stars for some reason but we want to label them so we can click on our labels here
On stellarium and we can see this is M 105
And then we've got NGC 3384 over here M105
And NGC 3384 are nearly identical. I mean I could not tell the difference really they both kind of look like
glowing
eyes sort of
In the darkness there. There's not a lot of these stars. Don't really show up to me these this
I mean that's a 12.5 magnitude star. I was looking through a
six inch telescope when I observed
In preparation for this video, so I didn't really see a lot of other stars
I could see some of these that was about it and then here's these galaxies just sort of sitting out here by themselves
They were fairly bright magnitude. Nine point seven is pretty decent
NGC 3384
magnitude 10
So they're fairly bright. I'm actually gonna go ahead and bring up the surface brightness
So you can see that - there's the surface brightness by adding the additional information in the configuration window
So the surface brightness of NGC 3384 is 11.92. That's actually a fairly bright galaxy
That's pretty decent and then we got a surface brightness oddly enough of 13 for M105, which should be dimmer
So you might even ask yourself
How did Messier see M105 but not see NGC 3384 if they're both pretty much the same in brightness?
Well, the thing is that's not really what happened
Messier's assistant Pierre Mechain actually wound up of writing notes about m 105
And someone found those notes and said oh hey look
These are the this is the galaxy that Mechain must have been talking about for some reason
He may not have written notes or the notes were not found for NGC 3384 because these are right next to each other you can't
Miss them. They're both elliptical galaxies that look almost identical in the sky
NGC 3384
Thats got a surface brightness of almost 14 and a magnitude of 13
I could not see that in the six inch telescope, so don't worry about too much about that one
So now the question is if there's not a lot of bright stars
Around there and there aren't really good pointer stars to get you to the other galaxies, which we're gonna look at M
95 and M 96. How do we get there? Well, if you happen to have a
an equatorial mounted telescope
This is actually simpler than you might think. So, let's actually bring up the equatorial grid
And we'll see. Oh, it's not going to do that. If I have the telescope on you'll have to do it this way
So we'll kind of do like what a 1 degree field approximately is so a 1 degree field
Let's see feel of you. Yeah about
It's a little bit larger than that I'll help we can kind of see where we're going then
so
If you go just a little bit south really just about one full degree
South so you can just take your slow motion control and move it so that you're you're losing the galaxy's kind of this way
in your field of view, you're gonna go down like this and
You might even find that star. That's a 10th magnitude star. That's that seems bright there, but it's really not 10 magnitudes
It will be brighter than a lot of other stars in the area for sure
But you can probably even have that galaxy in your field of view. Let's see. Well, there it is now
Remember, I've got a reflector set up here. So it's gonna reverse it left to right
That's why m96 jumped over to the left side of the screen there. However,
M96 I found to be really faint
This was not easy to find in a six inch telescope. Notice the surface brightness. It's 13
Notice the magnitude is 9 but that surface brightness means that it's not terribly bright. You're gonna have to use averted vision
You're probably gonna have to tap the telescope moving the telescope
By doing the equatorial mount motion like that is actually what helped me find M96
because I was it was moving that those rods that I talked about last week is
What allowed me to be able to see where that little faint patch was
Now this is on a not an elliptical galaxy like M105 and NGC3384 were. this is actually a barred spiral
And M96 is 31 million light years away
So it's actually the closest of the three those other two about 35 to 36 million light years away
Now what we can do is I'll have to taking this off unfortunately
But now you can actually kind of you could take your right ascension and move this direction over here
And I'll just kind of pretend like we're actually moving it that way
You know what let me go ahead and do that actually with this so here was our 10th magnitude star
We're gonna go this direction. Look there's m95. M95 is brighter
And I will show you how much brighter it is. The magnitude is 9.7 and that surface brightness is 11.8
That is probably the brightest of the three galaxies and I did not have any difficulty finding M95
The problem was is there's not a lot of bright stars to guide you there. So you really want to start
By going to your other stars first
I'm sorry, your other galaxies first M105 and NG3384 which are in between
Those two nice bright 7th magnitude stars here. I'm sorry fifth magnitude stars. This is our 7th magnitude star
that's kind of anchors where M105 is and then when we zoom in
We can find those two glowing eye
Galaxies they kind of look like eyes go down your 10th magnitude star
Just leave that out of the field of view now
you got M 96 move it back and forth so you can get that motion going to be able to see it and
Then you can hop over and find M 95 which happens to be also a barred spiral
Galaxy and it is about 32 million light years away
So these the photons from these galaxies have been traveling for millions of years
Don't waste them
let them be seen by your eyes and say thank you photons for traveling all that distance just so that I can see you and
Say "I found it!"
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