OR: Chasing the elusive rings and a few other faint things

[Muriel Dulieu Holzer]

Chasing the elusive rings and a few other faint things

This Saturday the 13th of June 2026, we were back in Glenn County under dark(er) skies with Steve Gottlieb and his 24” StarStructure, and Mazen and his new (to him) classic 18” Obsession. I was curious about Mazen’s new telescope as I had considered buying it in the past. In daylight, it looked like it just came right out of the box with a few improvements. But what matters most in a telescope is how it feels, what you can see through it in the darkest of the night, and the magic of it all. I am happy with mine.

While we were setting up, I noticed some small (1 inch) Western Toads jumping around. There were quite a few of them as we saw them three times, or was it one very active toad?
I wondered where they lived as I did not see any water around. 

As darkness set, Steve suggested that we warm up with some Orion DeepMap 600 objects. He suggested the two globular clusters M53 and NGC 5053, which lie roughly 1 degree apart. They are located in Coma Berenices. 

Looking first at M53 in the 24”, it appeared as a large cluster, with a central round glow of indistinct stars on top of which one could distinguish maybe around 100 distinct stars. Two bright stars, HR 4992 and HR 4987, lay at the 1:30 position. From M53's center, star trails streamed outward in the opposite direction, more than 90° around from the two stars. I looked again at M53 in my 18”, first with a 24 mm eyepiece, but the cluster appeared too small. So I switched to a 9 mm eyepiece and the view was magnificent, very similar to what I had seen in the 24”. 

NGC 5053 was a smaller, fainter cluster. In the 24”, I could see 5-10 tiny stars coming in and out of view. I took a look in my 18” as well. The two bright stars mentioned above were  convenient to orient myself towards NGC 5053, since using M53 as the vertex of an angle, NGC 5053 lies 100 degrees counterclockwise from the two bright stars. But then I wondered, because the mirrors in my telescope flip the image, does NGC 5053 still lie 100 degrees counterclockwise from the two bright stars in the eyepiece? Thankfully, since the image is flipped twice, even though the image is upside down, the sense of rotation of the angle is preserved. 

What surprised me most in looking at those two globular clusters is that, even though one is significantly fainter and smaller than the other, they are actually physically close. M53 lies at ~58,000 ly and NGC 5053 lies at ~53,000 ly. There is even a tidal bridge and evidence of past interactions between them. Their difference is not due to a difference in their distance from us, but to a difference in their number of stars and resulting magnitude. NGC 5053 has about 3,500 resolved stars and a magnitude of roughly 9.5-10, while M53 has about 500,000 total inferred stars and a magnitude of around 7.6. 

Now that I was warmed up, it was time to look into ring galaxies. I have read a little bit about them, and been amazed at some of the Hubble pictures online, especially Hoag’s object. First I looked into NGC 2950. NGC 2950 is a really interesting lenticular galaxy in Ursa Major, with two nested bars, an inner ring and an outer ring. One thing I did not think about though is how small it is. At an apparent size of 2’.7 x 1’.8, all I could see was a small galaxy with a faint slightly oval glow and a medium brightness core almost starlike. 

Another ring galaxy I wanted to check out was NGC 3626. NGC 3626 is a lenticular galaxy in Leo also with an inner and outer ring. And with an apparent size of 2.7’ x 1.9’, it turned out to be another very small galaxy. In my 18”, I saw a small galaxy with an oval glow around it and an almost starlike core. 

Next on my list was  NGC 3945. It is a barred lenticular galaxy in Ursa Major that features two concentric bars, an inner disk, a stellar nuclear ring and an outer ring. I had some hope for this one as it was a little bigger than the other ones with an apparent size of 5.2’ x 3.5’. Its visual magnitude of 10.75 was similar to the magnitude of NGC 2950 (~10.9) and NGC 3626 (~10.6-10.9) but unfortunately as it was a larger galaxy, its surface brightness was lower at 24.12 mag/arcsec^2, vs 22.74 mag/arcsec^2 for NGC 2950 and 22.86 mag/arcsec^2 for NGC 3626. As a result I could only see a faint small round glow in my 18”.

My next galaxy, NGC 4293, is also a larger galaxy at 5.3’ x 1.8’. It is a barred lenticular with a circumnuclear star formation and an outer ring in Coma Berenices. As with NGC 3945, its visual magnitude was similar to that of the first two galaxies at ~10.4, but its surface brightness was lower at 23.61 mag/arcsec^2 due to its size. In my 18”, I saw a small/medium elongated glow of ratio 1:3 with a light brightening in the middle.

Getting tired of small galaxies I can barely see, with rings I can’t see at all (I had been warned but I had to check for myself), I went through my list of ring galaxies to find the ones that are bigger and brighter. One object stood out, M94, NGC 4736, also called the Croc’s Eye Galaxy in Canes Venatici. This is a spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici with an inner ring and an outer ring. Finally I was going to look at a reasonably large (11.2’ x 9.1’) and bright object (Mag ~8.2). But unfortunately I could not see its rings either; all I could see was its round smooth disk with a large bright core in it. Its inner ring does appear on the SeeStar picture though. I also see a dark broad ring in the picture, which is between the inner disk of the galaxy and its outer ring. From the dark ring in the picture, I got a hint of the faint outer  ring outside of the dark ring but I can’t see clearly where the outer ring ends. 

I went to check what Steve was looking at. He had his 24” on UGC 8993 and UGC 8994, a physical pair of barred spiral galaxies in Virgo. In the eyepiece I saw three stars on a line, with two of the three stars, including a nice red star, very close together around 11 o’clock, and the third one at 5 o’clock. 

Slightly to the left and above the bottom star (GAIA 3659652439336449024) lies UGC 8993. It looked faint, round with a star-like core visible with averted vision. Looking at it on the Aladin website using the DESI Legacy DR10 survey, https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/, one can see its two arms closing on each other to almost form a ring. It also seems to have a bright inner ring. It looks like I found by chance another ring galaxy! 

Looking at UGC 8994 in the eyepiece, I saw a faint round glow slightly to the left and below the bottom star. Looking at it on Aladin with the DESI Legacy DR10 survey, it looked like a regular barred spiral with beautifully defined arms; two of the arms originate from the tips of the bar. 

Next we looked at UGC 8961 in the 24”. It is an edge-on spiral galaxy in Canes Venatici. Looking at it in the eyepiece, it looked like an elongated galaxy with ratio 1:5, almost needle-like, with an elongated brightening towards the center and a small core visible with averted vision. Looking at it on Aladin with the DESI Legacy DR10 survey, one can see what looks like a ring of dust located halfway from the edge of the galaxy to the middle.

I tried to check those three UGC objects on Steve’s website https://deepskygottlieb.com/ but my search returned no results. I asked him about it and he said it was the first time he had observed them, and that they would be on the website next month.

Time to go back to my telescope. There was a planetary nebula I had been wanting to check out, the Jewel Bug Nebula, NGC 7027, in Cygnus. It will appear in Steve’s article about planetary nebulae in Cygnus in the September edition of Sky & Telescope. And this was the perfect opportunity to try my new 5 mm eyepiece. I looked up what jewel bugs are; they are pretty shiny bugs. The planetary nebula did not disappoint in the eyepiece. Like its namesake, it was tiny (18” x 11”), bright, blue and shiny. Its shape looked almost like a rectangle with ratio 1:2 surrounded by a very faint glow. 

When I took a look into Steve’s 24”, he was observing the globular cluster M4 in Scorpius with his night vision device. The globular cluster looks similar to what I have seen before with its middle trail of stars and curved star trails on the outside making it look like a closed rose seen from the side. The only difference is that, with the night vision device, the stars look brighter.

Back to my telescope, I looked at NGC 5907, the Splinter Galaxy. It is an edge-on spiral galaxy in Draco. It is fairly large and I needed to go to a lower magnification from my 5 mm to my 9 mm to see it comfortably without it being tight in the field of view. In the eyepiece, I saw an elongated galaxy with a ratio roughly 1:10 and a brightening in the middle. It looked a bit narrower in the middle but maybe this is an optical illusion due to the increased brightness in the middle. 

My last project of the night was to explore a little corner of the Hercules Galaxy Cluster, Abell 2151. I looked for a while for NGC 6040 in my 18” but could not find it. Steve came over to help. I was not sure my PiFinder was being very accurate, so I suggested we use the drive-to on his scope instead as it would be easier. On his 24”, we first located two stars TYC 1507-0522-1 and TYC 1507-0801-1 going from left to right. Below the first one lies a faint round glow that appears to be the two galaxies NGC 6041A and NGC 6041B with IC 1170 nearby. Below the second star on the right lies another faint round glow that appears to be NGC 6042, also called NGC 6039. Following the line formed by these two galaxies to the left, one finds a third faint round glow that appears to be NGC 6040A and NGC 6040B. Going down, there appears to be a triangle of stars pointing up. The right star has a faint round glow and it is in fact the galaxy NGC 6047. What I thought was a star at the bottom left of the triangle is in reality another galaxy, NGC 6043. And in between them I can see a faint elongated glow, which is the galaxy NGC 6045. A little bit further down, I saw another faint round glow, which is the two galaxies NGC 6050 and IC 1179. Looking up at a star chart, I realized later that there are many more galaxies to explore in this galaxy cluster. Even though it contains at least 200 galaxies, many are very faint, but supposedly I should be able to see 25-40 of them. 

It was close to 3 am now; Mazen had gone to bed and Steve was packing. I saw a glow in the sky near Sagittarius and decided to check it out. It was the open cluster M23. I wanted to look at a few showpieces before bed, in particular the Trifid Nebula, the Lagoon Nebula, the Eagle Nebula, and the Veil Nebula. I took a quick look at these but then started hearing noises around me. Steve was gone already. I wondered if the noise was a wild pig. Then I heard some noise on my other side, a mountain lion maybe? I packed in 5 minutes and went to bed. 

 

 

[Richard Navarrete]

Another fun report, Muriel. Thanks for sharing!

Richard

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[James Webster]

Very well written. I'm impressed with the quality of your work. Good on you. It's research quality peer review journalism.

As a side note, as per the ending of your article: I got caught in a standoff with a close by growling mountain lion in the Sierra foothills for about 2 hours. I stayed in place. I left my whip and gun in the observatory and not on my observing table outside as I usually did, as there were known to be mountain lions in the area. One with cubs and they were sometimes visible during the daytime. The noise from the whip and the guns bullet hitting gravel, if need be, should scare them away. Another time a huge brown 🐻, displaced by wildfires, kept me in the observatory most of the night.

[Muriel Dulieu Holzer]

Thank you Richard and James! I really appreciate the support!

Oh wow that sounds really scary James! Where did that happen? Which observatory is it?

I took a longer exposure of M94, the Croc's galaxy, last night. One can see the outer ring a lot better. 

I have been reading a bit more about Abell 2151, the Hercules Galaxy Cluster. You probably know this but it is all new to me. Abell 2151 is a young galaxy cluster rich in spiral galaxies. It is the dominant member of the larger Hercules Supercluster containing 13? galaxy clusters. I imagine you have looked at Abell 2151 before, how many galaxies could you find?

-Muriel

[James Webster]

That happened at the Fiddletown observatory. I probably was between a mother and her cubs. They're shy creatures that will generally leave you alone unless you're running or bicyling. The bear was an anomaly due to forest fires at higher elevations. The last 100 meters or so of the road to the observatory became almost impassable. Dark sky maps indicate it may not be as dark as it used to be. I stopped going there about 7 or 8 years ago because of the road. It had been my go to observing spot. No raccoons. That was a big plus.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sf-bay-tac/c9c66795-070d-49b2-a27c-6da7a0e36031n%40googlegroups.com.