Two exotics gems: MCG-01-24-001 & UGC 5373 Sextan's Dwarf
Hi all
Last friday my wife Conchi and me enjoyed an humid but decently dark (21.6 SQM) observing night at our observatory in La Alcarria region, about 150 Km NE from Madrid, Spain.
After observing with the 24" f/4 several well known galaxies the first night hours, it was time to try some more challenging deep sky objects. My planetary software (SkyMap 11) showed a pretty DSS image of MCG-01-24-001, a galaxy in Hydra.
At first, I thought it was a mislabeling in the software, since such bright galaxy deserves a NGC entry but, when the telescope aimed at the correct coordinates, the field showed a bright 9mag star in the center, so that it was clear that the relative bright galaxy was almost fully obscured into the star glare.
Direct vision throught an Ethos 13 (220x) hardly ever shows a very faint asymmetrical halo around the star; with averted vision, the galaxy appears easily as a luminous band 6' long just over the star. Changing between DV and AV makes the galaxy blinks as the well known Cygnus planetary; a very curious "Blinking Galaxy".
The second faint object was UGC 5373, the Sextan's Dwarf.
In this case the DSS image shows what you get at the eyepiece: a very faint glow, but several faint knots were detected at the very vision limit. Indeed, Sextan's Dwarf looks me more like a faint Palomar cluster than a galaxy.
If any of you have seen these galaxies, what is your impression about their blinking and globular appearance?
Last edited by javier_gl; March 17th, 2015 at 06:06 PM.
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