Malin 1

Malin1 AKA (PGC 42102)

COMA BERENICES

J2000
RA
12 34 28
DEC
+14 36 19

Type LSB SBO or SBa

17.1V MAG

Malin 1 was discovered in 1986 and as far as I know it is the largest spiral galaxy know. It is 650 000 light years across five and A half times the diameter of the Milky way Galaxy. It is 1.1 billion light years from Earth.

Attachment 19
Click to enlarge

Hi Jimi,

I'm intrigued by your post of Malin 1. Definitely going to try for this one with my 30" next dark sky session! I was not aware of this "giant" until now. Thanks

Jerry,
Should be no trouble in your 30", I read that the reason it is so big is that it is isolated and has had no interactions with other galaxies. Its on my list too.

Give it a go and let us know. ;)

I found a image of Malin 1 that shows the faint LSB arms of this giant galaxy.
Attachment 20
click to enlarge

Hi ALL,

Last Saturday night Steve Gottlieb, Big Jim Chandler, Jerry Morris and I had a positive observation of Malin 1 with my 48" reflector. I found the field which has very few stars at 287X. It would only pop in with averted vision about 25% of the time . I bumped up the power 488X and the view was about the same, only popping into view every now and then. Big Jim was next and when he went up the ladder and looked in the eyepiece he said that it was direct vision easy and could see it 100% of the time. I had to cut in line to see this for myself and sure enough when I looked there it was EASY direct vision. By luck we had got a moment of very steady seeing and all of us had a great view of it. Malin 1 appeared larger than I thought it would be. This very much surprised me, it had a fairly bright stellar core and extended fuzzy halo approximately 12" wide. I was very excited to catch the 1.1 billion year old light from this super size galaxy.

Exactly this kind of objects is what I hoped to read about when I registered :nicethread: :)
I didn't think of this being a visually accessible object.
Congratulations on this observation!

A 48" scope in extremely dark skies is of 'some value' for this sort of object. LOL.

Nice observation and thanks for sharing. I know Steve is very big on the 'billion year club' and has shared some nice targets like quasars that can even be seen in an 18".
Glad you guys had some sky. It is close to unusable here and that darn jet stream is doing it trick on the seeing as well. Glad you guys got some 'quiet time' in the sky out there.

An easy entry into the billion light-year club is Q1634+706 with a visual magnitude of about 14.4. It's too far away to fit our normal conception of distance. The light-travel time in 8.9 billion years, but that tells us neither how far away it is now nor how far away it was when it emitted the light we are seeing. The comoving radial distance 13.3 billion light-years, which tells us where the quasar is now. This figure depends on cosmological parameters, and the figure I gave here uses the default values and general solution in Ned Wright's online cosmology calculator.

Sue

Jimi,

That is one we will have to look for when the 82-inch program is going again!

Joe

Welcome to DSF Joe,

I would love to look at Malin 1 in the 82". I hope they get it open to the public soon.