Recently a member in another astronomy community wrote an observing report about this galaxy group in Leo. I hadn't heard about it so I decided to check it out tonight.
Locating the cluster was easy. I had a 12.5mm eyepiece in the focuser for 158x, and the first impression when seeing this group was "Wow!" The field was riddled with galaxies, and the more you looked and used averted vision, the more fuzzy blobs of light popped into existence.
The densest part of the cluster is centered around NGC 3842. Several galaxies packed closely together are visible here, but the whole region is filled with galaxies, so using Sky Safari Pro to identify what was what, I was able to observe 33 of them.
Here is a beautiful image of the field that I found:
https://delsaert.fil...l-1367_lrgb.jpg
Here's an annotated version depicting what I observed: https://i.imgur.com/GoCDpRe.jpg (same image as above, just annotated, so image credit goes to Bart Delsaert )
This is an incredibly beautiful region. I can see that I missed a couple seemingly obvious galaxies out away from the main clump, so I'll have to go back and re-visit.
Equipment
- 14.7" F/4.6 dob
- Paracorr Type 2
- 12.5 Nikon (158x) - used for initial observations
- 10 XW (198x) - used for majority of observations
Conditions
- 21.08 MPSAS in the direction of the cluster/group, 21.12 at zenith
- Great seeing
- Good transparency
- Annoyingly windy
- Very dry
- 15 degrees F (0 with wind chill)
Observed list
- NGC 3861A
- NGC 3860A
- PGC 36619
- NGC 3873
- NGC 3875
- NGC 3862
- IC 2955
- NGC 3867
- NGC 3868
- NGC 3857
- NGC 3859
- NGC 3851
- NGC 3842
- NGC 3841
- NGC 3845
- UGC 6697
- PGC 169975
- NGC 3873
- NGC 3844
- NGC 3840
- PGC 36503
- PGC 36502
- PGC 36510
- PGC 36486
- IC 2951
- UGC 6683
- UGC 6719
- PGC 36544
- PGC 36526
- UGC 6680
- PGC 139671
- NGC 3816
- NGC 3821
Edited by CrazyPanda, 29 March 2022 - 01:50 AM.