Most challenging attempted objects?

[Jamie Dillon, DDK]

Weeks ago, John Pierce said something that got me going, about toughies: “I think the most challenging objects I ever found and identified were 3-4 bright globular clusters in M31, not because they were super dim, but because they were small and in very crowded fields.”

Now there’s a question. What’s the object that gave you the worst time before you finally found it.
For me, hands down ngc 3172, called Polarissima Borealis because it’s the closest galaxy to Polaris we can see with our scopes. Tried it several times in Felix my 11”, no dice. This was 3 nights in a row at CalStar XIII in 2012. Did see it in Gottlieb’s scope (24” ?).
It took aperture, not astonishingly. After I got Uncle Albert the 16”, caught that sucker at the next CalStar, 2013 - “Dim little oval, slight brightening toward core with averted vision. No drift for a PA!”
I like to estimate position angles on galaxies, partly for confirmation. This one had no east-west drift with work with!

Have a couple of persistent DNF’s (did not find) that I’m still on about. Maybe this summer!

The poster child is 6380, a globular in the tail of Scorpius. Looked for this item several times, including on a good night at IHOP, where Jane Smith and I looked thru Felix and thru her fine 18”. It has a corrected location which I have marked, right on the SkyAtlas page. We were right exactly on the spot. Certainly an SGNB (Steve Gottlieb Nut Buster)
Vmag is listed as 11.1, 3.9’ diameter, sounds quite plausible. Where Polarissima is listed in the NGC as very faint, this one is glossed as extremely faint. No kidding.

Then there’s ngc 7552, the fourth of the Grus Quartet. Started looking at this set of galaxies from Willow Springs. Then again from CalStar IX in September ‘08
Searched carefully when looking at the other 3. Ace conditions. Limiting magnitude was 6.5, seeing 5/5, a serious Lake San Antonio night.

7552 just wasn’t there, totally 404. It’s at -42 dec which might be part of the problem from here. Sucker has a listed Vmag of 10.6, SB of 12.8. Big enough too, 3.4x2.7’. Definitely hafta keep looking.

[Akarsh Simha]

Now there’s a question. What’s the object that gave you the worst time before you finally found it.

Oh this is easy — Sculptor Dwarf. But there are many runners up to this: the Fornax Dwarf, Leo II, Maffei II, Draco Dwarf…

I haven’t yet seen Abell 85. I “cheated” with Jimi’s telescope for Dwingeloo 1. Cas 1 is still only a “weak” observation.

Dwarf galaxies, the Maffei group, and globular clusters in general are my most painful observing obsessions.

[Mark Wagner]

While others have had (easy?) success at it, the busy Milky Way field it sits since has made Campbell's Hydrogen Star elusive for me.  Maybe this year.

[Muriel Dulieu Holzer]

I really wanted to see Mayall's Object (Arp 148, Mag 15.4, angular size 0.43' x 0.17') which is  two galaxies in a collision, with the galaxy being hit having a ring shape. I could not see it at all in my 18" at Calstar. 

More generally I would like to see any ring galaxy of type R in the Vaucouleurs classification, that is with a closed outer ring. I would like to see not just the galaxy, that is easy, but the outer ring as well. Has anyone ever seen the outer ring of a ring galaxy type R in an 18" or smaller telescope? What about with a night vision device?

Three famous ring galaxies are:

• Hoag's Object in Serpens Caput (Magnitude 16.0-16.2, angular size 0.45') 
• The Cartwheel Galaxy (EOS 350-40) in Sculptor (Magnitude 15.2, angular size 1.1' x 0.9')
• The Bullseye Galaxy (Arp 147) in Cetus (Magnitude 14.3, angular size 0.65' x 0.29')

I made a list of other ring galaxies visible next month:

• NGC 2681 (Ursa Major, mag 10.3, 3.8′ × 3.5′) 
• NGC 2859 (Leo Minor, mag 10.7, 4.6′ × 4.1′)
• NGC 2950 (Ursa Major, mag 10.9, 2.7′ × 1.8′) 
• NGC 3626 (Leo, mag 10.9, 2.7′ × 1.9′) 
• NGC 3945 (Ursa Major, mag 10.6, 5.5′ × 3.6′) 
• NGC 4293 (Coma Berenices, mag 10.4, 5.6′ × 2.6′) 
• NGC 4394 (Coma Berenices, mag 10.9, 3.6′ × 3.2′) 
• NGC 4457 (Virgo, mag 10.8, 2.7′ × 2.3′) 
• NGC 4698 (Virgo, mag 10.6, 4.0′ × 2.5′) 
• NGC 4736 / M94 (Canes Venatici, mag 8.2, 14.4′ × 12.1′) 
• NGC 4941 (Virgo, mag 11.3, 3.6′ × 2.0′) 
• NGC 7217 (Pegasus, mag 10.1, 3.7′ × 3.2′)

It looks like I just missed NGC 3081 (visible December-March) which looks  like a really nice ring galaxy (Hydra, mag 13.6, angular size 2.7' x 1.6').

Some of the best ones are in the southern hemisphere unfortunately:

• NGC 1291 (Eridanus, mag 9.4, 9.8′ × 8.1′) 
• NGC 1543 (Reticulum, mag 10.6, 3.7′ × 0.9′) 
• NGC 6782 (Pavo, mag 11.8, 2.5′ × 1.5′) 
• NGC 7020 (Pavo, mag 11.5, 4.1′ × 1.7′) 
• NGC 7187 (Piscis Austrinus, mag 13.4 B, 1.2′ × 1.1′)

As a side note, if you look at Hoag's Object closely, by closely I mean in the Hubble picture, you can see a little ring galaxy inside its ring. It is kind of cute. 

-Muriel

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[Akarsh Simha]

On Thu, May 28, 2026 at 7:47 AM Muriel Dulieu Holzer <mdu...@gmail.com> wrote:

I really wanted to see Mayall's Object (Arp 148, Mag 15.4, angular size 0.43' x 0.17') which is  two galaxies in a collision, with the galaxy being hit having a ring shape. I could not see it at all in my 18" at Calstar. 

I've had a few successful observations of Mayall's object with the instrument -- just keep at it!

 

More generally I would like to see any ring galaxy of type R in the Vaucouleurs classification, that is with a closed outer ring. I would like to see not just the galaxy, that is easy, but the outer ring as well. Has anyone ever seen the outer ring of a ring galaxy type R in an 18" or smaller telescope? What about with a night vision device?

 NGC 3646 might not be a bona fide ring galaxy, but certainly one you can see:
https://www.deepskyforum.com/showthread.php?1571-Object-of-the-Week-March-20-2022-NGC-3646-a-Ring-Galaxy-in-Leo

Maybe NGC 922 is a ring? I have it marked as such somewhere, but not sure. I have "detected" the Cartwheel in the 18-inch, but without any structure. Same with VII Zw 466 -- I've detected it but not resolved the ring.

You may have a shot at NGC 2217 in Canis Major -- I happened to pick up on its ring in my 28-inch, but of course it will be very challenging with an 18-inch.

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[mccart...@yahoo.com]

Ever since I resolved Sirius B in 2015 with my then 12-inch f/7, I've been gunning for Procyon B.  It's a notoriously challenging pair with a full 10.34 delta magnitude (0.46 primary, 10.80 secondary).  Separation in 2015 was only 4.0", but it has been steadily increasing and is now near apastron at 5.12".  Writing in 2018, Bob Argyle in his Anthology of Visual Double Stars says: "There is currently no one alive who has seen the companion of Procyon.  The last person to do so was Chrles Worley" [who died in 1997].  Nothing like a statement like that to spur me on.

In 2020 I reported an observation with my 20-inch, only to find my self-made occulting mask (in a 6mm ortho) was causing an internal reflection.  In the last couple of years, I've seen three reports: One from a talented young observer in Russia using a 10-inch; a European observer using a 18-inch Newtonian, and a few months ago another European observer using a 12-inch Mewlon. 

Over the last year I've had several tantalizing, spurious hits of Procyon B using my 20-inch Newtonian, 6-inch f/15 refractor, and even my 80mm f/15 refractor.  With all of them I tried various tricks like using blue filters, hexagonal and apodising masks, occulting bars, etc.  

But my first "no question about it" observation came in April when I was testing my new-to-me 18-inch in my back yard.  I used Procyon as an alignment star for the DSC, and thought to give it a try.  I first noticed a possible secondary using my Leica zoom eyepiece, then confirmed it with 18mm & 10mm Baader classic orthos (130x & 234x).  It was a very faint, small dot, essentially due north (estimated using the drift method), and persistently seen throughout the field no matter where I placed it.  No occulting bar, filter, mask, or placement beyond the field stop needed!  B was just about to pass behind a diffraction spike, and did so a half hour later.  The lower magnification kept A's diffraction in control.

I still have some challenges remaining:

JOY 1, which is Mira: B is a white dwarf, and the pair form a cataclysmic variable binary system.  Mira A ranges from magnitude 2 and 10, while B also varies between 10 and 12.5 but an indeterminate period (thought to be ~ 7 years).  The separation is also indeterminate, thought to range between 0.4-0.5".  To observe this, Mira A needs to be at minimum, and B needs to be at maximum.  I try every time Mira is at minimum -- partly why I got an 18-inch I could travel with is to get to dark skies & elevation during these occasions.

Rigel B = BU 555 BC.  In 1871 Burnham thought he saw an elongation in Rigel B, and in subsequent years Aitken, Hussy, and others were able to take measurements.  The best I've had is an elongation with my 20-inch at 800-1200x.  It's thought the eccentric apparent orbit only allows observation for short windows when it is ~0.15-0.2", then it is unresolvable for long stretches of time.

Sigma Orionis BU 1032 AB: This has a nearly circular apparent orbit of 23-years, and a nearly consistent separation of 0.26", magnitude 4.07 & 5.27.  I should be able to get this with my 20-inch, but the best I had was as unequal elongation (olive shape) at >1000x.  I keep trying. 

Mark

[Jay Freeman]

I also found Procyon B a difficult target. I made several observations of Procyon in early 2001, in my Astro-Physics 10-inch f/14.6 Maksutov Cassegrain (whose name is "Gillian", based on her near-magical powers and on Kim Novak playing a witch of that name in the movie "Bell, Book and Candle").

On February 3-4, observing from Fremont Peak with an 8 mm Brandon eyepiece for a nominal magnification of 464x, I logged Procyon B as "suspected" -- the position angle was dead on, but two different ephemerides gave differing values of the separation at that time, so I ended up being cautious. My log shows that I spotted the companion as "a fleck just outside/adjoining the first diffraction ring", which is a little vague, but would put it a bit over an arc-second out from the center of the Airy disc, which -- on present reflection and after checking some things on the web today -- does seem about right. On that same night I split Sirius (same instrument and magnification), and noted that Procyon was an easier split than Sirius, though with the comment that Procyon was much higher in the sky, so perhaps was less affected by seeing. If memory serves, I may have published a report of that observation on the TAC mailing list at the time, though my own archive of the post shows that I composed it before I got worried about the separation.

On Feberuary 27-28, 2001, using the same instrument with a 12 mm Brandon eyepiece (309x), at the old Dinosaur Point site (down by the boat-launch area) I again looked at Procyon, but seeing gave no chance of a split.

On March 14-15, 2001, set up at the Montebello Open Space area, again with 464x in the AP-10, I logged both Sirius and Procyon as "occasionally split" -- the seeing was up and down. I did not record position angle or separation, which means that I did not consider the split remarkable.


Thus Bob Argyle (quoted below, after my signature) seems to have been wrong: As far as I can remember, I was alive in 2018, though come to think of it, if I had been dead at the time I might well not remember being so ...


I have split Sirius with smaller aperture -- I found it my six-inch f/8 pre-EDT Astro-Physics triplet when it was near maximum separation, and showed it to several other folks while I had it. Sue French has seen it in four inches of aperture.


Other difficult objects for me have been the Sculptor Dwarf Spheroidal galaxy and Maffei I. Note in passing that there are *three* objects in Sculptor that are occasonally referred to as "The Sculptor <something-or-other> Galaxy": The first is NGC 253, a bright spiral galaxy that Messier would surely have noted if he happened to look that way. The second is what used to be called "THE Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy" -- a ninth or tenth-magnitude (visual) dwarf galaxy that is nearly round and rather larger in angular size than the full Moon. Many sources show it as 30 or 40 arc minutes in diameter, but to me it sometimes looks larger. It is located about four degrees south of alpha Sculptor. It is now perhaps best described as "The Sculptor Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy" The problem is that presently, another dwarf galaxy in Scuptor turned up. That one is now known as "The Sculptor Dwarf Irregular Galaxy". It is about visual magnitude 15.5 and roughly an arc minute across. I have not seen it. Things are further complicated because what Sky Safari 6 (still in use by many, including me) plots as "Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy" is indeed four degrees south of alpha Sculptor and indeed has a listed magnitude of 9.51, but has a given size of only about an arc-minute: Someone confused one galaxy with the other and messed up the plot. Anyone who looks for a small bright galaxy at that position will not find either Sculptor Dwarf.

In any case, my observation of the Sculptor Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy may have been the second visual observation of this elusive object. I was at Fremont Peak on September 23-24, 1987. It was a dark night. Someone else was there with an early Astro-Physics 130 mm F/6 triplet, and I had a 10x70 binocular. I had looked for the dwarf gaiaxy before, and had probably seen it but not realized it, for reasons that will become clear in a few sentences. I had long since given up trying, because I had gotten to know the star field in the area too well and so was likely to deceive myself, but in the time since my last attempt I had forgotten the detailed star pattern and only remembered that the galaxy was about four degrees south of alpha Sculptor. I suggested we search for it. We deliberately underpowered the 130 mm -- I recall we were using an eyepiece that gave about a 12 mm exit pupil, which wastes light but guarantees that the surface brightness of objects on our retinas is maximized. I scanned for a while and found a ghostly glow at the right point. While my companion was looking, I tried my binocular, but background light from the night sky was distracting, so I pulled my jacket up over my head, leaving only the binocular barrels sticking out. I looked like a cross between the Headless Horseman and the Guns of Navarone, but -- there was the galaxy. I have seen it a dozen or so more times in various apertures -- I once logged it as "convincing but marginal" in a 10x50 binocular. A problem seeing it is that unless the actual field of view is considerably wider than the galaxy itself, the apparition looks like vignetting. It has no sharp edges: If you have it centered in (say) a one-degree field, what you see is a barely detectable centered broad soft glow that slowly fades toward the edges of the field. So if you are chasing down this object with a that kind of magnification, the trick is to move the telescope and note that the glow does *not* stay centered -- it is fixed on the sky. Bingo. The Fornax Dwarf Galaxy is similar but easier.

I observed Maffei I from Fremont Peak on February 2-3, 1981, using my Celestron-14 at 71x, 122x and 196x. There was no fog in on the coastal plain below, but even so, the sky was dark enough to see evening zodiacal light. At my plotted position, I logged a few arc-minutes of hazy glow with about ten foreground stars, which fits photogrqphs that I have subsequently encountered. My problem finding it was that it is in a star-rich part of the sky, and I needed a rather deep image of stars nearby in order to locate the field precisely. There were published photographs of the area -- I recall some in _Sky_&_Telescope_, I think it was -- but they had no plate scale, no indication of what way was north, and were not taken in visual wavelengths. Fortunately, I had a friend in an astronomy program at UC Berkeley (I was working on my physics PhD there at the time) who was able to point me a more useful images. Without them I would probably have had no luck.


Hmn, other toughies I have chased down are the jet in M87 (Celestron-14, lots of magnification, it's tiny and close to the core of the galaxy-- this is one of the few deep-sky objects that requires diffraction-limited seeing for a good view), and an elongation , but not a clean split, of the gravitationally-lensed quasar images that make up Einstein's Cross (C-14 again, use considerable magnification). And oh, yes, Deimos and Phobos, in the AP-10 with the 8 mm Brandon, during a very close Mars opposition. And I can't claim credit for chasing it down, but there was that one time at Bumpas Hell in a Lassen Star Party when the ISS briefly flashed through a medium-magnification view with my C-14, and for a fraction of a second I could see girders and solar panels.


-- Jay Reynolds Freeman, Deep-Sky Weasel
---------------------
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[Jay Freeman]

I have a logged observation of Mayall's object on March 17-18, 2001, in my Celestron-14 at 98x at the old Dinosaur Point site. I did not note any detail.

-- Jay Reynolds Freeman, Deep=Sky Weasel

---------------------
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http://JayReynoldsFreeman.com (personal web site)

> On May 28, 2026, at 07:47, Muriel Dulieu Holzer <mdu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I really wanted to see Mayall's Object (Arp 148, Mag 15.4, angular size 0.43' x 0.17') which is two galaxies in a collision, with the galaxy being hit having a ring shape. I could not see it at all in my 18" at Calstar. [...]

[Howard Banich]

My nemesis is the Cone Nebula. Easy-peasy with night vision, but I've never seen a trace of it visually in any size telescope. 

Howard

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[Jay Freeman]

I have twice logged NGC 2264 as embedded in nebulosity, both times in my C-14 at 98x, once with no filter and once with an Orion Ultrablock.

-- Jay Reynolds Freeman

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[Alvin]

Akarsh,

For Abell 85 - try low power with an O-III filter.  I've seen it three times with my 22" telescope at less than 100x.  Average NELM is 6.5, so the skies doesn't have to be that dark.

You should see easily with your 28".

CS,

Alvin

[Alvin]

VII Zw 466 is something else in my 22-inch at Shot Rock and IHOP.  

Once I saw it through Jimi's 48", I had to give it a shot with my 22-inch telescope, and the ring was detectable.  I observed it twice (2009 and 2010).    My notes from 6/12/10 at Blue Canyon (NELM 6.5)

22” at 306, 383, and 460x – This is one of my favorite ring galaxy groups. The ring galaxy, CGCG 315-43, is a faint, even surface brightness glow with hints of brightening at the edges, suggesting a ring. Two of three companions were detected as very faint glows. The first companion, CGCG 315-44, is round and very faint. 0.2’ across. The other one, CGCG 315-43, is a 2:1 elongated glow. PA = 120 and 0.3’ long.

[Jamie Dillon, DDK]

Akarsh quickly listed the Sculptor Dwarf as a memorable toughie. “But there are many runners up to this: the Fornax Dwarf, Leo II, Maffei II, Draco Dwarf… Dwarf galaxies, the Maffei group, and globular clusters in general are my most painful observing obsessions … Cas 1 is still only a “weak” observation.”

You listed a couple of my favorite happy obsessions. I’ve made a point of going after members of the Local Group, now have 19 in the bag, including the 3 you listed.

Jay just described his view of the Sculptor Dwarf, “the apparition looks like vignetting.” It was your similar description of the Fornax Dwarf, once upon a time, that helped me tease it out of the field. On a dark night at the Peak in ’03, what I wrote, “Like vignetting, Jay was right.”

And for those among the Unwashed who haven’t gone after a bunch of globulars, it needs to be said that a great number of our Milky Way globular clusters are pretty, very far from painful. I made a long fun project of seeing every globular cluster that would show in a medium-aperture scope, down to -45 dec. Of the 95 in the bag, 87 are NGC’s, many of then gorgeous.

Yes I understand that the globulars you’re talking about, Mr Simha, are the ones on beyond zebra (Dr Seuss phrase). I’ve been picky there, gathered up two Djorgowskis, 1 Arp, 1 Terzan and 4 Palomars, 7, 8, 9 and 11. All of them acquired tastes except for Pal 8, which is in a very pretty stellar neighborhood.

Regarding those two Maffei galaxies, I simply bow to their difficulty. Too much Milky Way galaxy in between.

Assuming you mean Cas A, did catch that on an excellent night at Lassen, when by chance I had the Devastated Area lot to myself. Brief note - “Splotchy arc.” This was with Uncle Albert the 16”, and Carter Scholz’ custom findercharts were invaluable. Very cool that for a long time, this supernova remnant was regarded as strictly a radio object, not visual.

[Steve Gottlieb]

Cas 1 is another one of the very heavily obscured dwarf galaxies (in Cassiopeia, of course), discovered first as a radio object in 1995

https://images.mantrapskies.com/catalog/OTHER/CAS1/index.htm

Steve

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[Jay Freeman]

I once took some time to chase down a few nearby dwarf galaxies, mostly with the C-14 at 98x, but occasionally magnifications as high as 244x were useful. I have seen Leo I (easy,shows up in much smaller aperture), Leo II (harder), and Leo III (harder still), and as I previously discussed, the Sculptor Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy and the Fornax Dwarf. I have also logged Andromeda I, II, III and V (but not IV), the Antlia Dwarf, the Aquarius Dwarf (also known as DDO 210), the Cetus Dwarf, the Draco System, the Pisces Dwarf, the Sagittarius Dwarf Irregular Galaxy, Sextans A and B, and the Ursa Minor Dwarf. (All those names were current at the time of my observations, which were all circa the year 2000, but for all I know they may have changed since or become confused with subsequent discoveries in the same constellations. Barnard's galaxy also counts, and since Messier 54 is generall acknowledged to be the nucleus of the vastly larger Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal galaxy -- or at least is a globular cluster within it -- I suppose I can claim that one as logged as well. It is possible I have missed a few -- I never made a list titled "Dwarf Galaxies I Have Seen", and my personal database of observations is based on index cards, so it is difficult to search unless I know for sure the name or other identification of what I am looking for. (I have been doing this since long before I bought my first personal computer, and with more than 30 000 observations logged I am reluctant to start typing them into a file.)

There are of course lots of brighter or larger local group galaxies, which I suspect we have all seen: M31, M32, M110, NGC 147, NGC 185, M33, IC10 and IC1613. And if you wish to split hairs, you can always log the Milky Way itself.

I have never been far enough south to see the Magellanic Clouds, alas. The southern boundary of my observing history is 45 degrees south declination, extended to 60 south in that portion of the sky visible from Hawaii during my one trip there in June of 2000.

Speaking of globular clusters, why stop at the edges of the Milky Way? With C-14-sized instruments, everal can be identified in M31, I think I recall one or two in M33, and the Fornax system has at least six, including NGC 1049.

Maffei I is doable, but good identification requires noticing that it appears much the same as a nebulous cluster in our own galaxy -- the galaxy itself appeared to me as a patch of haze liberally sprinkled with foreground stars. I have attempted to see Maffei II more than once, but recall no success and can find nothing about it in my data base.

-- Jay Reynolds Freeman
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