Clear Skies Blog update - Astrotrip, Boureuilles, 29 April 2025 (blog 4 of 4)

[Victor van Wulfen]

Hi all,

Just posted my last blog for the spring 2025 astrotrip to northern France: "The night Helwân broke loose"

An all-nighter, over 100 objects observed. There's a few observing recommendations in there, including a (HII ?) region in NGC4747, a galaxy I dub a "Mini-Box Galaxy", a highly recommended IC / Vorontsov-Vel'yaminov, and much more.

Tally for all nights of the trip is:

1 globular cluster

2 HII regions

3 planetary nebulae

2 quasars

321 galaxies & galaxy groups

44 double stars

Total: 373 observations

First time observations: 265 objects

I hope you enjoy reading about my endeavors as much as I enjoyed writing about it. Spoiler alert: my upcoming DSF OotW (mid-June) is in there.

Cheers,

Victor

[Scott Harrington]

Another bright one revealing detail was NGC4450. East of the middle I noticed a north-south running lane, that is perhaps (part of) an arm. In CSOG, the NGC is one of a pair of galaxies, as behind its eastern edge is PGC5262309. Unsurprisingly, that tiny, faint PGC proved elusive.

At 1.5 billion light-years, it's not too surprising that you couldn't see PGC 5262309. Interestingly, that designation is not in NASA/IPAC:

Even fainter than NGC4498 and by itself, in my aperture, nothing special to report about, is NGC4523. That being said, I did enjoy observing it. That's due to 3 superimposed stars that make it an interesting view. There's a fourth one, but at a cataloged magnitude of 15.9 it was out of reach.

I didn't know about this galaxy and find it interesting that so many stars are seen in front of its disk!

NGC4670 = Haro 9 = Arp 163 = Vorontsov-Vel'yaminov 1563. It's not too big, but the detail is in the core and I found its nucleus to be on the western edge of that brighter core. Being a Haro galaxy, this is definitely one to come back to next spring to see what more detail filters and magnification can tease out.

Glad you got to view this one!

Yet another one that can be considered a showpiece and another 'first-timer under dark skies' for me, was NGC4725 - the "TIE Fighter Galaxy". Now, I am not a Star Wars aficionado, nor am I fond of Star Trek... quite the opposite, frankly... but I could make out part of the galaxy's namesake shape. Also, NGC4712 to the west-southwest was observed.

Huh. I'll have to try to study this one next spring.

Scott H.

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[Adventures In Deep Space]

> At 1.5 billion light-years, it's not too surprising that you couldn't see PGC 5262309. Interestingly, that designation is not in NASA/IPAC:

In general, NED doesn't include the very high LEDA numbers -- which are really internal numbers to HyperLEDA -- although SIMBAD does in many cases.  In fact, if you directly search PGC 5262309 in HyperLEDA, you'll draw a blank (SDSS J122835.05+170513.0 will work, though).

Steve