Observing/Photographing Dwarf Galaxy Leo 1

Best I could do with one 120 sec exposure before the clouds rolled in. Now we know why a ton of lumiance data is required...

Cheers

Dave

Hi all, I've known about this galaxy for some time - it's printed on my SkyAtlas 2000, but has anybody ever tried to observe/photograph it?
The glare from Regulus (the brightest star in Leo) would be strong....and it's not that hard to find!Keith..

Not only is Leo I very challenging to image, it's also very difficult to visually observe. An open framework Newtonian scatters light from Regulus off dust, tube, focuser etc making things tricky although not impossible as I know of observers such as Tom Polakis who actually found Leo I quite easy with a 13-inch! Alistair Ling suggests well baffled refractors (presumably large ones) with spotless optics for viewing low surface brightness galaxies such as this.

Tough one alright! Is that Regulus at the top of the image?

Keith..

Regulus was miles away - the tiny FOV barely covers Leo1 and is small enough not to have Regulus anywhere near - but as you can see, its a very dim object...

I have to say Dave, I dont see it? :oops:
Is all that background noise the object ?

QED

The few stars you can see are presumably the brighter Leo1 stars. The dimmer ones are swamped by the noise. If the sky had stayed clear, I could have gopr a few more shots and stacked them, improving the S/N ratio. But as ever, the weather wasn't co-operating.

But Leo1 fills the image above - my pointing accuracy was bang on to about 10 arcseconds of the centre of Leo1.

Dave