FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Not a Messier Marathon Report 3/13/2005 -- NGC 2903!

[Joe Larkin <joeclarkin@xxxxxxxxx>]

I was out at Vekol with 5 other people rather than what I imagine was
a major star party at Arizona City for the Messier Marathon.
Conditions were good, with good transparency, and decent but not
great seeing. It was fairly warm and dew wasn't a problem even though
the humidity was high for this location and time. 

There was more greenery than I've ever seen at Vekol Road.

I'm not energetic enough for a marathon so I concentrated on only a
few items with my 16" dob. I mostly observed objects from Tom
Polakis' book from Cancer, Leo and Leo Minor. 

And I'm only reporting on one remarkable object.

NGC 2903 is a large bright galaxy near the sickle of Leo. It was easy
in my 11x80 finder. 

In my 16" dob it was an amazing object showing a great deal of
detail. It is a large spiral tilted so it was very elongated, but not
edge on. It showed knots in the spiral arms with the most prominant
on the North-East side. This knot is cataloged as NGC 2905. The
galaxy showed some spiral structure and dark patches and lanes. At
times I got the impression of multiple wispy narrow arms as opposed
to the general feeling of broader spiral structure. 

It took power well and I blew it up to about 225x with a 9mm Nagler.
It showed more details with this than a lower power. It also looked
good and showed detail in a 12.5 dob as well.

This object is bright, large and well known but the large amount of
detail in large scopes may not be as well known. I also observed it
almost 10 years ago (4/1/1995) in a 10" dob. With that scope I didn't
spot much detail from good skies in central Florida.

Joe Larkin  


                
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