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Date of Observation ...... May 13, 2020 Instrument ............... 13.1" f/4.5 dobsonian Magnification ............ 85x and 76x Location ................. Fredericksburg, VA (light pollution map) Observer ................. Eric David Skies .................... clear, cool, no Moon, slight haze & humidity |
This evening was not quite as good as the previous one in terms of transparency, so that may have contributed to the far greater difficulty I had in identifying the galaxies in Coma Berenices than the night before in Virgo. We started off with a group of galaxies in the area northwest of the cluster Melotte 111, as shown in the chart below. NGC 4136 is fairly bright, but also a rather large face-on spiral, with a correspondingly low surface brightness, resulting in me having to try a variety of different eyepieces over 30 minutes to finally detect it. The final eyepiece that allowed me to see it was a four-element plössl, which is the fewest lens elements that I have in an eyepiece (no Kellners here lol). What I finally saw was the barest hint of an elongated vapor of a smudge, but it was in the exact position it's supposed to be in, so I recorded the object. |