Object of the Week, April 27 2014 - MAC 1242-1128 B/C/D -Collinear Trio of MAC galaxies

[RolandosCY]

Challenge taken! I will give it a shot tonight if weather allows...

[RolandosCY]

Challenge taken! I will give it a shot tonight if weather allows...

Well, I did give them a shot two night ago. Zooming in to the correct location was a breeze thanks to M104 and a couple of distinct asterisms. But actually seeing them.... Well, that was another story. Initially, by exploring the correct area with my 18" and a Tak LE 7.5mm eyepiece (275x) showed emptiness. I did try hard though, and by continueing to stare (using my hooded vest to cut out all extraneous light) slowly but surely, a VERY VERY faint patch of light did materialize. At first I could detect this only with averted vision and only occasionally, but by spending a long time on it, I was able to hold it steadily with averted vision and very occasionally feel that there is something there even with direct vision. What I could see was a longish streak of very feeble light. I tried to draw it, but as soon as I sketched the (few) visible stars in the field the patch was lost. I had to wait maybe for another ten minutes before the patch materialized again, I observed it enough to have it clearly in my mind and placed it on paper. At no time could I break it up into the constituent galaxies. I did try to double the magnification to 550X but once I did I could no longer locate the patch, mainly because there were no nearby visible stars to focus on! Oh, how I wished I had a tracking platform! I did try to see it with lower power eyepieces but I failed, and while I did manage to see it (with averted vision only) with my 7mm Nagler at 294X it definitely seemed more, ahmmm, visible in the LE 7.5mm.

I have to admit that I was worried if what I was seeing was the combined light of any very faint stars that happenned to be there, but a check the next morning showed that no very faint stars existed at the correct positions that could be "combined" to show such a glow, so I am pretty confident that I did manage to see the -unresolved - galactic trio...

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