Sky and Telescope - May 2012 - (Page 61)

The Oval’s Southeastern End
NGC 4921 is the third-brightest galaxy in the central Coma Cluster after NGC 4889 and 4874, the two huge ellipticals at the cluster’s center. Large and amorphous, NGC 4921 is immediately recognizable as a face-on spiral. Slightly elongated NGC 4923 lies only 2.6′ south-southeast of NGC 4921 while another bright spiral, elongated and relatively large NGC 4911 (shown above), is 9′ southwest of NGC 4921. Tougher NGC 4919 lurks almost midway between NGCs 4923 and 4911, and slightly southeast of the line connecting them. I was able to detect a few photons from 15th-magnitude PGC 44864 because it lies 2′ west-northwest of NGC 4919 directly along a line to a 12th-magnitude star 6′ farther west-northwest. The task was not made any easier by the need to repeatedly reﬁnd my landmark, shy NGC 4919.

The Coma Cluster includes a few ﬁne spiral galaxies as well as a huge number of ellipticals. North is to the upper left in this extraordinary photograph of NGC 4911 from the Hubble Space Telescope.

North of NGC 4911
An easy star-hop north-northwest from bright NGC 4911 leads to a band of seven galaxies. NGC 4906 is small and faint, but not diﬃcult. Small IC 4042 is obvious, but I can only occasionally see IC 4041 in the sweet spot of my averted vision. While I was hunting IC 4041 at 229×, a line of three galaxies appeared along the eastern edge of the ﬁeld of view. IC 4051 is relatively large and displays a nucleus. NGC 4908 is fairly small, and more concentrated than rated the surrounding IC ng
PGC 44848

Coma Through 12.5 Inches
It was with great pleasure that I accepted Alan Whitman’s invitation to contribute a sketch of the Coma Cluster through my 12.5-inch Dobsonian reﬂector. I soon realized that capturing what turned out to be 33 objects in a single ﬁeld of view was a challenge like none that I had ever met before. Instead of sketching the eyepiece view directly, I combined observations over multiple nights at magniﬁcations from 93× to 263×. Guy Mackie observes the deep sky from southern British Columbia.
4907

4894 4881 4895 4860 PGC 44784 4858 4865 4883 IC 4045 4889 IC 3955 4886 4908 4898 4873 4864 IC 4051 4874 4867 IC 4042 4872 4871 4906 4921 4923 4919 4911 4876 IC 3937 4869

4927

BEV HROMEK

Sk yandTelescope.com May 2012 61

NASA / ESA / HUBBLE HERITAGE TEAM / STSCI / AURA

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky and Telescope - May 2012

Sky and Telescope - May 2012
Table of Contents
Spectrum
Letters
75, 50 & 25 Years Ago
News Notes
Saturn’s Raging Superstorm
Stars Above, Earth Below: Astronomy in National Parks
The Remarkable Case of Comet Lovejoy
In This Section
May’s Sky at a Glance
Binocular Highlight
Planetary Almanac
Northern Hemisphere’s Sky
Sun, Moon, and Planets
Celestial Calendar
Exploring the Solar System
Deep-Sky Wonders
Going Deep
S&T Test Report
New Product Showcase
Telescope Workshop
Planetary Imaging with Your DSLR Camera
Gallery
Focal Point

Sky and Telescope - May 2012