A trio (of sorts) in Leo

... but not the classic Leo Trio (although M65 is included).

I started with M95. The conditions weren't great (the high humidity was causing worse light pollution than usual), which made for a somewhat frustrating start. After an hour trying to nail down the bar I gave up and went on to M96.

M96 3/23/2009 23:35 UT; Pickering 4, NELM 5.5, SQM 20.5
16" Mak-Cass

Very bright core elongated NW/SE with a much dimmer averted vision elongation slightly more NNW/SSE. (My eyes seem to be picking up the bar in the slant of the elongated core, while the dimmer elongation reflects the light density of the inner arms.)

Disk more or less circular, with extension to the dimmer elongation to the SE and a generalized darkening to the NNE.

Conditions were somewhat poor with high humidity contributing to more light pollution scatter. I made some use of both the Deep Sky filter and a larger exit pupil (55 Plossl) to get as much detail as I could. Overall, though, much easier and more satisfying than M95.

Feeling somewhat refreshed, I went back to M95.

M95 3/23/2009 23:35 UT; Pickering 4, NELM 5.5, SQM 20.5
16" Mak-Cass

Very difficult to get anything more than a semi-stellar core swimming in a circular disk under these conditions. I spent about an hour, using everything from 70X up to 330X, with and without a Deep Sky filter at the larger exit pupils. The higher light densities probably worked a little better, but there wasn't much between them. Sometimes I felt the Deep Sky was helping, but never enough to nail down any detail. I finally took a break and sketched M96 before coming back to this one.

In the end it was motion that brought out the bar. Jiggling wasn't really helping, but slewing the whole field back and forth at 64x-sidereal provided the most conclusive information. I tried slewing in both axes, and rotated the diagonal to change the image orientation to make sure I was picking up actual detail instead of eye/brain-induced artefacts. Still got just the bar; no ring.

Note: neither of those two galaxies are actually round, but there wasn't enough light available in the disks for me to make out an orientation.

The Cloudy Nights sketching forum has a thread on sketching the "real" Leo Trio, which I can't fit in my field. However, I've got sketches of 2 members on their own from previous years, so I thought I'd tackle the last and possibly then do an at-the-desk composite sketch.

M65 3/23/2009 23:35 UT; Pickering 4, NELM 5.5, SQM 20.5
16" Mak-Cass

Large and very bright, with three condensations visible in core (the DSS images suggest two are foreground stars). A sweep of higher light density extends from S of the core around the W side and up into the N extension of the disk. A darker patch is seen to the E of the core, and some mottling in the S extension of the disk (perhaps HII regions along the brighter arm?).

Anyone know if the clumping in the bright arm to the S can be seen visually, and whether or not they are HII regions? (I didn't think to blink them with a UHC -- but I did first notice them with a DeepSky filter on my max-exit-pupil 55mm Plossl.)

Cheers,
-- Jeff.

Look good Jeff, always a favourite target of mine in the club's 12" Dob too. Nice to see a sketched version of them.

Seanie.

Thanks, Seanie.

I had a couple of Arps in the region tee'd up as well, but between spending so much time trying to get the bar on M95 and the conditions not being the greatest I gave them a pass.

Hopefully we'll get some more clear skies this moon cycle, but it's not looking promising.

-- Jeff.