Star Deck Observatory DSO of The Week

Hello!

Welcome to The Star Deck Observatory's DSO of The Week!
This week's choice is a pair of Messier galaxies that can be fairly easily picked up in even a very moderate small telescope. I have myself observed them in a Celestron 80mm Short Tube F5 telescope with a 26mm eyepiece on a fair night of seeing conditions! It doesn't take a great deal of magnification to pick them up, but I personally to date have yet to be able to see them in my 12 x 60mm Skymaster Binoculars. The ST80 F5 with the 26mm Plossi comes in at a little over 15X and both galaxies show up as small but distinct fuzzy shapes. In a larger telescope at slightly higher power it is fairly easy to distinguish M82 as an irregular galaxy and M81 as a spiral galaxy.

Finding this pair of galaxies is a little more challenging than the previous DSO of The Week targets, but not too difficult to do if you can learn to star hop a bit! This pair of galaxies is located in the Ursa Major constellation just off of the line you can draw between the two Pointer Stars, Merak and Dubhe of Ursa Major and Polaris. First off locate Kochab of Ursa Minor, it will appear at the same brightness as Polaris and have a slight yellowish color to it. Next find Muscida, swing to the west of Dubhe, the top star of the two pointer stars of Ursa Major. Swing to the west of Dubhe about the same distance as the last star of the "handle" of Ursa Major is from Dubhe, but to the west away from Dubhe. Muscida will be the brighter star at that point away from Dubhe and about half as bright as Dubhe. Got it! OK, now draw an imaginary line from Muscida to Kochab, keep that line in mind for our next step in locating this pair of galaxies. Now find Muscida again and swing back towards the bottom of the two Pointer Stars, Merak. Find a star about half the distance between Merak and Muscida, SAO 27401 - 29 ups UMa, A7534. This star will be just slightly dimmer than Muscida, now draw an imaginary line from SAO 27401 to Polaris. Still got that imaginary line from Kochab to Muscida drawn in the sky too??! OK, M82 - M81 lie just below the intersection point of your two imaginary lines almost right on the line from SAO 27401 to Polaris! Here is the star chart to assist you in finding these galaxies.

This pair of galaxies will be up in the northern sky from sun down to sun up, however for the first part of this week the Moon will be up going through it's waning phases after midnight. This means should your local weather and seeing conditions permit it best viewing will be from onset of dark until the Moon makes it's approach in the morning hours. An excess of light pollution can make these two galaxies dancing in the distant regions of space rather difficult to see, good hunting!!

CS
Mark Jordan
The Mad One
39 47' 06" North / 85 46' 10" West