Observations of NGC2487
These are the observations available for NGC2487. If you have any of your own that you'd like to submit we'd love to put them on the website.
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Two month's worth of galaxies in one session!
This article was originally posted on Dale's Chippingdale Observatory Blog (now sadly gone) as
After galaxies in Gemini
- James.On Jan the 2nd I got my chance to catch up with the galaxies in Gemini that the fog thwarted me on in my last blog post.
These are the December 2016 Galaxy(s) of the Month as suggested by Owen Brazell of the Webb Society. I star hopped with my narrow field of view (FOV) to Pollux (beta Geminorum) and from there to NGC 2487 and its close companion NGC 2486.
NGC 2487 and NGC 2486 in Gemini by Dale Holt from his Chippingdale observatory in Hertfordshire. A nice pair but they didn't just 'pop' on the monitor, once again I had to work hard with settings, timings etc on the camera and also on the monitor to bring out the detail in the galaxies, spiral structure in NGC 2487 and the two dark regions and extended nucleus in NGC 2486. I'm beginning to think that my mirror has lost to much reflectivity and requires recoating as I'm just not getting that 'WOW' anymore.
When I looked up these galaxies for info on the Webb Society web site I noted that it had been up-dated and Owen had added a new Galaxy of the Month for January 2017, or to be more precise a group of galaxies with NGC 2289 being the primary member. With the group also being in Gemini I saw no reason not to track them down.
Currently being in southern Gemini I hopped up past Castor and onto the busy little group which fitted nicely into the Watec's narrow FOV. There were lots of stars in the field I have certainly seen plenty of less rich designated clusters! Once I had added the stars I sketched in the five galaxy members. In the orientation of my sketch with N down they are from the top as follows NGC 2290, tiny NGC 2288, NGC 2289, with NGC 2291 at the lower centre and the N-S elongated NGC 2294 to the lower left.
The NGC 2289 galaxy group in Gemini by Dale Holt from his Chippingdale observatory in Hertfordshire. Not a bad observing session, the SQM meter read 20.53 which for my location these days was a bit above average.
Dale Holt - 3 January 2017
