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In this episode of Star Hopping with Kissimmee Park Observatory, we'll begin looking at the
Realm of the Galaxies, and show you how to find these beautiful deep sky objects:
Messier 98 Messier 99
And the Grand Design Spiral, Messier 100
Alright, Let's Go Star Hopping!
Hey Hello Hi and welcome to Episode 18 of Star Hopping with Kissimmee Park Observatory!
I'm Dave Hearn, and I'm just overjoyed to be your host. In this series of programs we'll
show you the most beautiful sights in the night sky, and explain exactly how to find
them with your binoculars or telescope.
Well, the time has finally arrived for us to begin our exploration of the Realm of the
Galaxies, a galactic supercluster containing around 1500 galaxy members. The Realm lies
between the constellations of Leo, Coma Berenices, and Virgo, and can be found halfway between
the two bright stars Denebola in Leo, and Vindemiatrix in Virgo.
Between those two stars, however, lies a significant lack of bright stars, so navigation can be
difficult. Our guide stars in these hops are all around 6th magnitude, so a large finderscope
on your telescope will be a very useful accessory over the next few weeks. This is one of the
most difficult areas in the sky for newer amateur astronomers because there are few
stars and many of the galaxies look the same in the eyepiece. The best way of attacking
this challenge is to methodically hop through the main chain of galaxies, and identify each
one positionally as you move along. Along the chain of galaxies there are targets that
visually stand out, so you can use those to chart your progress. Years ago, my friend
Rob Conway and I did a galaxy hop together using our star charts, and called out the
positions of the galaxies as we found them together - this is a great and very fun activity
that I would highly recommend to you any your observing buddies.
We’ll spend three weeks looking at the Realm - in this episode, Part 1, we’ll set up
our search pattern and repeat it each successive week. It really helps to be consistent in
how you step through the Realm, because as it is very easy to get lost.
The first few galaxies that we will be looking at lie at the western end of the cluster,
and we’ll start with the faintest one and get successive brighter. But to find them
we need to do our setup for trekking through the Realm from the West - in this case moving
downward toward the eastern horizon.
Our gate to the Realm in Leo is the bright star Denebola, which we saw in the last couple
of episodes. Denebola is the star in the tip of the triangle that forms the Lion’s tail.
Are you ready to venture into the Realm? Sounds scary doesn’t it? No worries, I’ll hold
your virtual hand on the way. So let’s go.
Move about 2 1/2 degrees down and to the left from Denebola to 5th magnitude Omicron Leonis.
This next one is a tough move, so get your bearings and check beforehand with binoculars.
Exactly 5 degrees down and slightly to the left lies 5th magnitude 6 Comae Berenices.
Just before you get there you will run into our first target, Messier 98, an edge-on spiral
galaxy in Coma Berenices. This is one of the faintest galaxies on messier’s catalog of
deep sky objects, glimmering at magnitude 10.1. The galaxy is pretty large on its long
axis at about 10 minutes of arc. because it is edge on, it’s light is fairly concentrated
so the contrast is pretty good. I love edge on galaxies because they pop into your eyepiece
as a thin line or flat oval, which makes them very recognizable.
If you ran into M98 on your way to the star 6 Coma, go ahead and get centered on this
guidepost star. This will be our home base star for tracking down into the Realm, so
it might be a good idea to practice this set of moves a couple or even a few times, from
Denebola, to Omicron Leonis, to 6 Coma.
Our next target is Messier 99, a face-on spiral with an interesting feature: one spiral arm
is somewhat separated from the rest of the arms. This is a good example of a unique galaxy
target, so when you find it you know for sure where you are. It’s a little brighter than
M98, shining at magnitude 9.8.
Moving straight down from 6 Coma by a little less than one degree will let you find a 6th
magnitude star. It’s fairly close by, so it should be easy to locate. From that star,
just move about a quarter degree to the upper right and you will spy Messier 99. Can you
see the separated arm? It’s pretty obvious, as in this image from KPO.
M99 was actually found by Messier’s friend Pierre Mechain. He also first found M98, and
M100, which are all in the neighborhood. What amazes me is that there are just so many galaxies
in this area - if Mechain and Messier could see the few that they did indeed catalog,
why not pick up the many more that are about the same brightness? It’s crazy. Well, those
are the kind of musings that we crazy astronomers have when we let our minds wander. In any
case M99 was the second face on spiral discovered, right after the Earl of Rosse first picked
up the famous Whirlpool galaxy, which we discussed and located last week.
Okay, moving on to our last and brightest galaxy target for this week, Messier 100.
Let’s move back to our guidepost star, 6 Comae Berenices. So now we will make two successive
hops using 6th magnitude stars. The first lies exactly 1/2 degree to the lower left.
Now continue in the same direction, to the lower left, to find our second star a little
less than a degree away.
Now make the last move about another half degree in the same direction, and you will
find the interesting face on spiral, M100, shining at magnitude 9.3. This galaxy is a
bit smaller at only 7 minutes of arc across, but with a little bit of magnification it
will show spiral structure in even medium size 6 to 8 inch scopes. This one is classified
as a grand design spiral because the spiral arms are long and wrap around the core.
So we’ve definitely broken the surface on our dive into the Realm of the Galaxies. We
started out with the edge on galaxy M98 at the outer edge, right beside our Guidepost
star 5th magnitude 6 Comae Berenices. Then we moved a little east and picked up the face
on spiral M99, with it’s one antisocial spiral arm. Finally we hopped two 6th magnitude
stars to locate the grand design spiral, Messier 100.
Next week we will traverse the most interesting part of the Realm, a pattern of galaxies called
Markarian’s Chain. This is the one where it’s easy to get confused by all the galaxies
you see at once in your eyepiece!
So that does it for this week’s episode. You can find the show notes on our website
at kpobservatory.org/SH018, where you can comment and leave any questions that you may
have.
I hope you've enjoyed star hopping around the Milky Way. We'll continue to bring you
these video astronomy tutorials every week on Thursday, and in their podcast format on
Fridays. They will be designed to help you find deep sky objects that are up in the sky
at the time we post them on the Internet.
The reason we create these video and podcasts is to help beginning amateur astronomers learn
the sky and get more enjoyment out of their telescopes and astronomy in general. If you
have any requests or suggestions of potential targets in the night sky that you would like
to see us present, just let us know down in the comment section below, or on our website
blog.
Don’t miss our free Field Notes for this episode, basically the script of the show,
with all the images and start charts we use for our star hopping activities. You can get
them for free at kpobservatory.org/FieldNotes.
If this is the first time you’re checking out Star Hopping, and if you found this video
useful, please consider Subscribing to our Channel by clicking the Big Yellow Button
down there, click the Thumbs Up on the video, and please share this tutorial out to your
friends who like looking at stars. Also, as I just mentioned, please feel free to leave
any question or comment below, and we will be sure to respond quickly.
Also, please follow KPO on Facebook, where we post all of our astrophotos and keep everyone
informed about upcoming astronomical events. We'd love to hear from you to discuss all
this great stuff up in the sky.
All the links to these places including our website kpobservatory.org, can be found below
in the Episode Notes as well.
And finally, if you feel this video provides you value, and if you'd like to see more,
please consider supporting us on Patreon by clicking on the gray box over there. On Patreon,
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great astronomy tutorials like this one.
Well thanks again for watching, and we'll see you next time on Star Hopping with Kissimmee
Park Observatory.