September 17, 2010 – Messier Galaxies

Clear, cold night, but the quarter moon made the sky un-dark.

Observations

Image via Wikipedia

• M94: Canes Venatici was easy to find, relative to the big dipper. Alpha CVn was easily visible with the naked eye, while Beta was barely visible. I found Alpha in the finder, and then panned over to where M94 should be – about 3 degrees away from Alpha, a little more from Beta (they make a triangle). M94 looked like a cross between a planetary nebula and a star cluster — a round smokey grey, with a nucleus that was pretty bright.
  

  Image via Wikipedia

• M63: Nearby is M63 (The Sunflower Galaxy) – from Alpha CVn in the finder I panned over to stars 20 and 19 CVn and then found M63 from there. It was very dim and so it took some looking to realize that it was there. Very dim, so not too exciting. I will look at this again on a darker night.
  

  Image via Wikipedia

• M51: I started at the star that is the end of the handle of the big dipper, hopped to Eta CVn, and then on the M51. Very dim.I’ll look at this on a darker night again too.
• M102: This was hard to find! The first time I looked around Draco. The edge of the little dipper’s cup formed by Beta and Gamma UMi point towards Eta Dra. From there I hopped to Theta and Iota Dra. I tried to pan to M102 from there but it was too difficult. I found two pairs of stars that formed
  

  Image by Chris Lasley via Flickr

  a shallow parallelogram near Eta. Two stars of one of the pairs points toward M102. This pair of stars along with Eta and M102 form an equilateral triangle. So I found M102 that way. it was very dim as well. I checked Stellarium to make sure I was looking at the galaxy.

I spent a bit of time trying to find M101 and M29 but by this time I was tired and losing patience. M92 was on my list as well but these will have to wait until another evening.