Virgo
Edge-on barred galaxy
RA: 14 44 56
Dec: +01 57 14
Magnitude: 11.0
1024px-NGC5746_by_Goran_Nilsson_&_The_Liverpool_Telescope.jpg
This past April, I joined Steve Gottleib and Akarsh Simha on a visit to Jimi Lowrey in west Texas and get in some observing with his 48-inch scope. We had four observable nights out of five, but with variable wildfire smoke taking the edge of the sky much of the time. Based on our observation of NGC 5746 on our second night of observing, I’m delighted that NGC 5746 is available for an OOTW object.
Two reasons – one, it’s a magnificent edge-on barred spiral in eastern Virgo that’s well away from the main clumps of galaxies in the Virgo-Coma cluster. Secondly, my observation of it got a good laugh out of us at the time, and hopefully I can relay some of the humor here for all to enjoy.
5746 is big and bright compared to most object’s we observe through the 48-inch, and I suggested it when the sky was losing its edge – wildfire smoke was moving in. But we couldn’t think of its NGC number off the top of collective heads, and while searching for it in Megastar, Jimi came across NGC’s 4716/17 and 4517, all cool objects. So, we looked at them first. Finally, someone – I think it was Jimi – looked up 5746 and that was the one I really wanted to look at.
After Jimi did his goto to 5746 and centered it in the eyepiece of the 48-inch at 488x, he came down the ladder muttering how awful it looked because of the smoky skies. He was truly disappointed. I went up the ladder next not expecting much, and to my astonishment I thought the view was quite extraordinary! As I came down the ladder, I said something to effect that “yeah, the sky is lousy, but that’s the best view I’ve ever had of 5746! We all had a good laugh at the stark contrast of our opinions.
Of course, Jimi knows what 5746 looks like on a great night through his scope and I don’t, but this smoky view so far exceeded what I’ve seen through my 28-inch scope on a great night that I was genuinely impressed. Ah, the power of aperture!
Aside from that, NGC 5746 is about 95 Mly from us, which is about double the distance of most of the Virgo Cluster galaxies. Even so, it has a fairly large apparent size of 7.4 x 1 arc minutes, and at 11th magnitude is quite bright.
I have two observations to share – my best view through my 28-inch and the view through Jim’s 48-inch a few weeks ago.
28-inch:
“An excellent edge on galaxy, slightly smaller and slightly dimmer than NGC 4565. High power paid off even though the seeing is so-so this low (this observation was made in early August, 2006) but at 92x, the bright star 109 Vir is in the same FOV and makes a lovely pairing. 92x to 408x,”
NGC 5746_28inch_invert.JPG
48-inch:
I made a quick sketch from memory of 5746 after coming down the ladder from the eyepiece of the 48-inch scope, and wrote this brief note:
“Although transparency is going downhill (because of wildfire smoke) this is best view I’ve had of this galaxy. 488x, 21.62 SQM
5746_48inch_invert.jpg
The message of my post is that NGC 5746 is big and bright enough to look good even in less-than-ideal skies, so- give it go and let us know!
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