19th/20th April 2020 - Report

Another excellent day with cloudless sky and a more temperate night. Conditions seemed to be on par or slightly better than the previous night. Observations for tonight will be carrying on with the galaxy hunt and wrote up an extensive observing list to get through, most I have never observed before, so didn't know what to expect. 

Location = Home, front garden 

Equipment = Skywatcher 14" GOTO 

Seeing = 3 
Trans   = 3 

M51 = Starting the night where I left of, using this target as my test object and even though it still wasn't fully dark the view was stupendous with details as strong as strong as my previous observation. 

NGC 3184 - Ursa Major = Known as the "Little Pinwheel", the foreground star distracts your attention at first but using AV reveals the disk and patience and breathing further shows the small and faint core. A pleasing view. 

NGC 3198 - Ursa Major = Beautiful sight. Strong and well defined shape with brighter central regions. While taking in the view AV started to reveal what looked like another, quite faint, galaxy in the same FOV and looking up afterwards shows me that I may have observed UGC 5558, repeat observations needed to confirm. 

NGC 3319 - Ursa Major = AV showed a smudge but I was unable to fix on a shape or any features. 

NGC 3294 - Leo Minor = Easily seen, strong semi oval shape. Lacking in features but a good view all the same. 

NGC 3432 - Leo Minor = Delicious view! A crisp edge on disk and the scattered foreground stars really add to the delightful view and the whole view had me salivating, really excellent. 

NGC 3430 - Leo Minor = Exquisite view! Two other galaxies shared the FOV adding to the, already, beautiful view - NGC 3424 and NGC 3413 - the closest of the two being a lovely edge on and the second being a small edge on with a more oval shape. The target object was nicely defined with good, but faint, structure. This is an easy one to recommend. 

NGC 3486 - Leo Minor = A bright core with not much else to see. 

NGC 3504 - Leo Minor = This was surprisingly lovely. Showing a strong bright core with bar structure and AV showing a halo of a dusty disk. I also had the pleasure of another galaxy sharing the view, it was compact and well seen. I believe it was NGC 3512

NGC 3675 - Ursa Major = Nice oval shaped disk, easy seen with a compact bright core. 

NGC 3877 - Ursa Major = This is a very pretty edge on and very well seen. 

NGC 3726 - Ursa Major = Easy seen, not much detail to pick on but still a nice observation. 

NGC 3583 - Ursa Major = This was much easier to see than I was expecting with a bright core and faint disk. Not bad at all this one. 

NGC 3344 - Leo Minor = Not as good as I was hoping for, just a smudgy disk, but the foreground stars help sweeten the view. 

NGC 2841 - Ursa Major = This was a rather nice view. Very bright core with a thinning out disk. Pleasing view.