Posted on 04/11/2015 4:02:08 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: Barred spiral galaxy NGC 2903 is only some 20 million light-years distant. Popular among amateur astronomers, it shines in the northern spring constellation Leo, near the top of the lion's head. That part of the constellation is sometimes seen as a reversed question mark or sickle. One of the brighter galaxies visible from the northern hemisphere, NGC 2903 is surprisingly missing from Charles Messier's catalog of lustrous celestial sights. This colorful image from a small ground-based telescope shows off the galaxy's gorgeous spiral arms traced by young, blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions. Included are intriguing details of NGC 2903's bright core, a remarkable mix of old and young clusters with immense dust and gas clouds. In fact, NGC 2903 exhibits an exceptional rate of star formation activity near its center, also bright in radio, infrared, ultraviolet, and x-ray bands. Just a little smaller than our own Milky Way, NGC 2903 is about 80,000 light-years across.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Credit and Copyright: Tony Hallas]
Oh great, yet another galaxy to frustrate me trying to find with my 5” Meade. Does not help it is starting to get cloudy at night again. The cold, dry winter nights seems to be gone for this year.
This is an easy easy find.
First find Leo’s nose (the end of the backward question mark).
Go further west and down and there is a fairly bright star Lambda Leo. Straight south is the galaxy. A good pair of binoculars will show a smudge.
Worth the effort.
Forget using GoTo. That is the difference between observing and just looking. Finding and study.
That GoTo computer drive so far has been a joke. My problem manually searching is the field of view. Got several eyepieces now, so guess the trick it find stuff with widest view and then narrow it down.
Manual is the way to go.
Get hold of Cartes du Ceil astronomy software (free download)).
It’s the best chart program out there. The others are pretty, but, Cartes is actually useful.
You may want to look into this website also:
http://www.uv.es/jrtorres/triatlas.html
PDF charts for download. Use the index to decide which one to look for.
http://www.uv.es/jrtorres/section_a/Triatlas_2ed_A.pdf
Download that and look for chart 14. That is the low information chart.
Try Chart C #197 for a real treat!
Looked at a few of those charts------
I SEE SPOTS!!!
AS for Cartes, there are add on downloads for extra galaxies, stars and pictures for the Deep Sky Objects.
As for the charts...”It’s full of Stars!”
Also, I just realized I put the link for the A4 paper size chart, not, the 8x11.
If you decide to print some of those charts, use the USA version.
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