As seen through my 18" on wednesday night from my home at Mosfiloti, Cyprus.... Enjoy!
Attachment 1145
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As seen through my 18" on wednesday night from my home at Mosfiloti, Cyprus.... Enjoy!
Attachment 1145
Nice detail. This galaxy is rarely above the horizon murk here (more a fault of our humidity than of our latitude), and so far I have only seen Herschel's "large opening with a branch", like this (12"):
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jLAQGAW69i...-02-17+C61.jpg
Very nice and realistic sketch. The knots fits perfectly.
With my smaller 14.5" I could separate also a few knots but from southern Germany it was always difficult to see the whole morphology as good as your sketch shows.
In contrast I remember the picture through the eyepiece of a 24" Newton from Namibia, wow, what details.
14.5", 283x-404x, NELM 6m5+, Seeing II
http://www.deepsky-visuell.de/Zeichn...38_NGC4039.jpg
I've always seen these (12.5", 21.4-21.5 skies) as two cooked shrimp.
I never see the full length of the tails, but I always see some tail on each.
The small, round, B&W image here is very close to the visual view. Maybe the visual tails are a tad shorter in the eyepiece.
http://www.jwinman.com/starcharts/NG...38%20chart.htm