Apologies for what is probably the most over-due OOTW ever. I was in an area of California that had very weak cell service and internet, and I was unable to post in a timely manner until today.
NGC 6070 was discovered by William Herschel on May 3rd, 1786 and is located in a beautiful field in Serpens. It presents to us in an intermediate orientation, not being quite face-on. The magnitude 6.7 variable star HD 145204 lies only about 8 arcminutes to the northwest (PA 326°), so it is best to get this guy out of the field of view while observing the galaxy.
NGC 6070 is the brightest member of a trio, with NGC 6070B (LEDA 1174983 - a double galaxy) and NGC 6070C (LEDA 1175364) being NE about 4.3 and 5.5 arcminutes respectively. However, these ‘B’ & ‘C’ designations seem to depend on where you look or who you ask, with NED using ‘B’ & ‘C’ for the faint companions and Wolfgang Steinicke's Revised NGC and IC Catalogue …
… where he says “…I discourage the use of these numbers -- all the objects have other more appropriate names that we would do better to adopt instead. Most of these suffixed numbers come to us from three sources: Gerard de Vaucouleurs's 1956 survey of southern Shapley-Ames galaxies, Eric Holmberg's 1937 list of double and multiple galaxies, and a list of galaxies in the far northern sky found by Philip Keenan, also published in 1937.”
While it is hard to argue with Dr. Corwin, it sure is easy to just say “NGC 6070B” when talking about a companion object… assuming we can all agree that it is “B” and not “C”… In any case, here is a copy/paste from SkyTools with a DSS overlay…
I observed NGC 6070 & Friends this week while attending the Golden State Star Party (GSSP) near Adin, California, at an altitude of about 4500 ft. This location is in the corner of the state near both Oregon and Nevada, and is very sparsely populated, so the skies are nice and dark. In fact, the attendance of the star party is about 400 people, whereas Adin itself has about 250 residents! The skies here the last few nights have been somewhat variable. I have used a variety of telescopes, since I am literally surrounded by many wonderful instruments. I first looked through Jeff Gortatowsky’s nice 22” UC on Friday night. NGC 6070 was an easy object using this aperture, an oval disk of fairly even brightness with some mottling and a gradually brightening core. Helped by Megastar overlayed with RealSky, we knew the exact location of the companion galaxies, but the average seeing and transparency limited us to only ‘suspecting’ that we were seeing these faint guys. I wandered down to Alan Agrawal’s 24” f3.3 Star Structure, and we looked at it again. The view was essentially the same in the 24” as it was in the 22”.
Saturday night was not nearly as good as Friday night, so I was ‘inspired’ to wait another day to add to my observations of this galaxy trio.
Sunday night had good transparency, and the seeing was still only average, but I did get a good look through Bob Douglas’ 28” Star Structure. The view in this beast was markedly improved, probably because of both the increase in aperture and the good transparency. It was immediately obvious that there was structure in NGC 6070, as I could begin to make out an arm on the NE end of the galaxy and the mottling became more complex overall, and the companions went from ‘suspected’ to being held with direct vision. I have the feeling that had I spent a lot more time at the eyepiece I would absolutely dig out more details, but I did not want to interrupt Bob’s observing schedule by dominating his telescope. Thanks, Bob!
As it always is, observing with the likes of the 3 folks who shared their telescopes with me, along with Jimi Lowrey, Steve Gottlieb, Howard Banich and Akarsh Simha, and many others here on “Dob Row”, is a real treat, and these times are cherished.
As always, give it a go and let us know.
Last edited by Paul Alsing; July 5th, 2019 at 11:20 PM.
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