When I first got seriously interested in amateur astronomy, I was determined to seek out all of the Herschel objects that were within reach of my Tasco 4.5" reflector, and then later my Edmund 8" reflector. Star hopping to faint deep sky objects was quite easy with a properly aligned equatorial mount, which both scopes had. Since acquiring my Orion 12" Dobsonian, and maps that amateurs in the 70s never dreamed of, I have become more interested in the NGC list. Completing the list in one lifetime would be a daunting task, but I have decided to give it my best shot (see blog entry for 30/03/2013), counting the ones I saw previously with the 8".
I am only including the objects within my latitude range--I could not possibly hope to spend enough time in Chile or Australia to see all of the NGC objects only available to southern viewers. Someday, however, I hope to get down there and at least view the highlights! As my latitude is 42 degrees N, I can discount many of the objects in the catalogue, though I have plans to observe once or twice a year from about 36 degrees N, helping me to get the objects in the south skies too difficult from my home base. And I am not interested in observing all of the NGC "mistakes." Many objects turn out to be faint stars, or double stars, that perhaps looked nebulous to viewers back in the day. Still others are duplicates of existing NGC entries. I haven't yet determined how many objects of the 7800 I have available to me, but I am guessing it will be close to 5000. As I am currently at just over 800 NGC objects seen, there is a long way to go. The project would be much easier and faster with a 16", though to date I have found everything with the 12" that I have attempted. Doubtless there will be some tiny, ultra-faint galaxies that I will never see, but by the time I have only those ones left to see, perhaps I will have a 16" scope or bigger. Our astronomy club has a 14" at the observatory, and a very good friend of mine has a 22" Dob. So the really faint ones are not causing me distress at this time.
I was never that familiar with the NGC list back in the early days (I began observing in late 1968), and when I did come across references to it in books it was usually described as a list of mostly very faint galaxies. That still describes the NGC pretty succinctly, though nowadays amateurs have access to telescope objective sizes we didn't even dream about back then! A list of faint galaxies, while still quite intimidating, is within the reach of many amateurs and their large scopes. Growing up, my local university had a 6" and an 8" scope. Those were pretty big back then! While I think they still are impressive, most observers would laugh at me for this belief (remember, a small scope back then was a 3").
Of course to seek out so many faint objects one must first have some type of mental disorder. I don't know what mine is called, but I seem to be mostly alone out there in my search for all of the NGC. The best part, of course, is after a night of observing many fainter objects, suddenly a 12.5 mag. galaxy is sighted and it seems like one is looking at the Andromeda galaxy! Clusters appear twice as wonderful, as do globulars, after viewing galaxy after galaxy. I never had much appreciation for fainter galactic nebula before, but I am now quite fascinated by them, even though some of the smaller, fainter ones resemble galaxies. I am in no hurry to complete the list, either. My Leo pre-observation rough pages number 30, with about 12 objects on each page. In almost two years I have barely completed 3 pages! I average about 3-4 deep sky objects per hour, not all of them NGC. I like seeing what is in the neighbourhood, so if the NGC object is in an interesting area, I will take some time and have a look around to see what else is there. Uranometria 2000, All-Sky Edition, accompanies me on every observing session.
I am happy knowing I will likely never complete my goal of seeing all of the available NGC objects. It is comforting to me to know that there is so much out there. If I make it a quarter of the way, or perhaps half, it will be an achievement worthy of some kind of award, no doubt self-presented. "I present the distinguished 'He Tried but Failed to See all of the NGC' award to Mapman, from Ontario, Canada, one of the cloudiest places on the planet. Good job, Mapman!"
Mapman Mike
No comments:
Post a Comment