Dec 15, 20021 min
A brief flurry.
Whilst the others were in the flesh spots of Lower Withington I braved the elements at Llyn Brenig. Big Dobs. are a problem in the wind so I set up deep in the forest.
Starting in Pegasus I had an unconvincing view of the local group Pegasus dwarf galaxy. It has a low surface brightness of 15.9sq/arcmin. Later when logging the observation I decided I was seeing a ghost, better luck next time.
Next I had a look at the Perseus-Pisces galactic supercluster. This spans 40 degrees of winter sky starting near Pegasus and finishing east of Algol. I hopped off from beta Andromedae and NGC 404. A whole raft of galaxies could be seen clustered around NGC 507. Twenty objects ranging from mag. 12.3 down to 14.9 were seen. A move slightly further east finds the excellent chain of 6 galaxies including NGC 383, recommended. Moving east to start from the open cluster NGC 752 I found a nice grouping of galaxies around NGC 708 (see this months S&T for further info.).
A visit to the Flaming Star nebula in Auriga, preceded a look at NGC 1931. This is a small tight cluster of stars with nebulosity, not improved by any filter. Moving down towards Orion found Lower’s nebula and NGC 2163. The latter appears as a ‘star’ with 2 opposing cones of nebulosity, very interesting.
Finally, a quick view of Abell 12 was dug out from behind the glare of mu Orionis.
by Paul Clark