Observations of M58

These are the observations available for M58. If you have any of your own that you'd like to submit we'd love to put them on the website.

• Galaxy of the Month and other Galaxies in Virgo

  For me last night was very good indeed. I often say that the Watec cameras perform well in poor and hazy conditions, and they do. But as with eyepiece views on a cracking night, images on the monitor really zing when the sky delivers!

  My initial target last night was NGC 4410A the Galaxy of the Month. I looked at the image on the Webb website, immediately assumed the target was one of the larger face on spirals and star hopped off after syncing on Denebola. When the last goto move put the larger spirals out of the field of view, centering on what appeared to be two small but bright galaxies touching or joined.

  I went and read the instructions! All was then of course revealed and made perfect sense, the monitor view with 15 secs integration showed pretty much all the goodies in and around the target so I sketched before moving onto the larger but much fainter duo NGC 4411A and B that had caught my eye initially.

  

  

  A different ball game, much tweaking of knobs trying to increase contrast so I could pull out more detail. I had no hope of seeing spiral structure the like of which was displayed so finely on the Webb web page. So I sketched all that I could make out and moved onto NGC 4567 and NGC 4568: Copeland's "Siamese twins" wow!

  

  Why hadn't I been here before? Fantastic, these must be an Arp I thought, checked and no, really! Spent a while sketching these making sure that angles were about right on the paper. The screen view really was something, then I started to think the star I could see in the lower portion of the larger left-hand galaxy NGC 4568 I couldn't see in image I could pull up in Sky Map Pro, I looked in Bratton's no star there either! I will leave it at that as I quickly scanned and fired it off to Guy Hurst just in case I had struck lucky, I doubt it but you never know we all look at many galaxies, most off the beaten track, hopefully one of us will strike lucky one day :) At the time of writing I have not heard back from Guy but I'm not holding my breath, there is bound to be another explanation.

  My penultimate target was M58, very close by the sketch in my Messier file was mediocre at best and made using the 14" back in 2009! With images tonight being good I would make a revisit. There was more detail to be had than my first sketch but this remain quite an elusive Messier for real intricate detail the outer arms are very tenuous!

  

  Last stop because the outline in Sky Map pro looked so long and slender was NGC 4762 and it turned out to be a corker of an edge on, very sharp, especially the brighter inner region radiating from the core and the outer halo isn't too fat and fluffy so it doesn't detract from the spear like view of the galaxy, this is a real winner. close to 3 stars, 2 of them bright enough to show diffraction spikes, this must be a great target for the visual boys? The star to the right was just above a tiny goings on of very distant galaxies.

  

  Brilliant session, time 01.30, eyes were burning, deffo time for bed, but sleep to a while to come as I was buzzing.

  Dale Holt - (15 April 2020).