[Lvas] Leo Trio Saturday, 25 April 2009

[Fred Rayworth]

All,

 

Our goal for April was the Leo Trio and I got an excellent view of it despite the mediocre weather conditions.

 

All three galaxies are quite bright and I am surprised Messier missed NGC-3628. It is a great distorted edge-on.

 

Though I knew what to look for from the recent photos posted on here, I could not see the distorted ege of NGC-3628. It was a nice bright fat streak, but I could not finesse enough detail out of it to see the twisted arm structure.

 

M-65 and M-66 were nice, bright ovals and I thought I saw a little mottling in M-66, but was not sure.

 

The image looked great at 70X through my Q-70 26mm. I may have tried the 32mm version, but never noted it in my log and can't remmber if it did anything to the view. I also may have tried 140X with the 26mm and a Parks Barlow, but didn't write it down either. Must not have blown me away, or I would have noted it.

 

Despite seeing down to almost mag 14, the sky background was not friendly to details. Even looking southeast away from the light dome of Vegas, the sky blackness was nothing to write home about.

 

Overall, it was a nice view. I think just about everyone that was out there looked at the trio at least once, if not more.

 

Attached is a drawing of how I saw it.

 

Fred

 

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