EAA Monthly Observing Challenge - May 2022, I will be posting Stellina images as I capture them this month... Pat Utah 
Easy: M5, M57, M82
M5 was discovered by Gottfried Kirch and his wife Maria Margarethe in 1702. William Herschel resolved individual stars in the cluster in 1791, he counted 200 of them with his 40-foot reflector.
M57 is the famous Ring Nebula. These objects are the remains of sunlike stars which have blown away their outer envelopes, leaving planet-sized white dwarfs at their centers.
M82 is a remarkable, peculiar galaxy in Ursa Major. M 82 was discovered along with its partner M 81 by Johann Bode, and both galaxies are sometimes known as Bode's Nebulae. Also called the Cigar Galaxy, M 82 has been spectacularly disturbed by a relatively recent encounter with M 81, and displays conspicuous dust lanes and heavy star formation. M 82 is the prototype irregular starburst disk galaxy.
Medium: M83, NGC 40, NGC5466
M83 is one of the closest and brightest spiral galaxies in the sky, and sometimes called the "Southern Pinwheel”. Messier 83 was discovered by Nicholas Louis de Lacaille at the Cape of Good Hope in 1752. M 83 is one of the showpieces of the southern sky, but difficult for mid-northern observers to view due to its southern declination.
NGC 40 was discovered by William Herschel on November 25th, 1788. NGC 40 is about 3,500 light years away, and about one light-year across. About 30,000 years from now, NGC 40 will fade away, leaving only a white dwarf star approximately the size of Earth.
NGC 5466 was discovered by William Herschel on May 17, 1784. Located 51,800 light years from Earth and 52,800 light years from the Galactic center, this globular cluster is unusual. Its spectral distribution of stars contains a blue horizontal branch, and is usually metal poor. As NGC 6544 orbits the center of the Milky Way, it is slowly losing stars due to the effect of tides at perigalacticon and galactic disc crossings, having lost 60% of its mass loss over the course of its evolution.
Hard: Comet 19P/ Borrelly, Ste 1, NGC 7023
Comet Borrelly or Borrelly's Comet (officially 19P/Borrelly) is a periodic comet which was visited by the spacecraft Deep Space 1 in 2001. The comet was discovered by Alphonse Borrelly at Marseilles, France on December 28, 1904. The comet was widely observed during January 1905. Orbital investigations have indicated the comet was placed into its discovery orbit by a series of moderate close approaches to Jupiter during the 19th century, namely in 1817, 1853, and 1889.
Stephenson 1 is an Open Cluster appearing in the constellation Lyra. It is 1272 light years from our solar system. Stephenson 1's apparent size is approximately 20.0 arcminutes, corresponding to a physical diameter of 7 light years.
NGC 7023 is an example of an open star cluster associated with a reflection nebula. NGC 7023 lies in a region of the Milky Way darkened by dust, within which the nebula is embedded. NGC 7023 is about 6 light-years across, and 1,300 light-years away. Within the Iris, dusty nebular material surrounds a massive, hot, young star in its formative years.
Challange: (10) Hygiea
Astroid Hygiea (10) is the fourth-biggest asteroid in the main belt, and is named after the Greek goddess of health. It is estimated to contain 2.9% of the total mass of the entire asteroid belt, and was discovered by the Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis on April 12, 1849. Hygiea is also the most oblate of the largest asteroids, with estimated dimensions of 530 x 407 x 370 km. Visual Mag 9.5, 0.3 arcsec. It may be possible to capture with a long exposure image of the star field and look for a small streak as it moves within the star field.
Edited by Alien Observatory, 30 April 2022 - 11:53 PM.
