It's time to Leo: AGC 1367

[davidem27]

I am preparing objects for the next night.
The winter sky in recent months gives us the majestic king of the jungle, the Lion, constellation full of celebrity-galaxies: in addition to two famous triplets there are so many NGC by the high surface brightness and at least two groups of Hickson very beautiful.
I've fallen in this small cluster, always noticed in the Uranometria as rather "heavy" and wide, but never really analyzed, and I've realized that it is one of the groups of galaxies Abell brightest: the AGC 1367.

This bunch in the sky covers about 1° of arc and is formed by elements from the magnitude 13 onwards.

I'm curious to spend some time, knowing that it takes a certain "freshness" to find all the findable with a 40cm telescope.
So I printed detailed maps, made ​​with the megastar, which incorporate the range specified by the Ethos 8mm with my Paracorr.
Or 260x and 2 'of arc of the real field.

The cluster is about 290 million light-years away and is, along with the above noted AGC 1656 in Coma, of the Coma Supercluster.

I report the maps in PDF, which include a map seeker, an overview of storage and four maps by simulating the eyepiece.
These four are critical to recognize the weak and lowly small galaxies, thanks to triangulations with field stars.

I attach for your comfort and inspiration to those who want to lose an hour in check 'em all.

The values ​​next to the galaxies, when reported, express their magnitude without comma (eg 145 = 14.5)

Maps: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/752663/AGC1367.zip

[Marko]

Thank you for posting the charts, they are great info for field use.
With an 18" dob on 3/28/2009 my logs show I had observed 31 objects tracked down on an very good night with 21.64 on the SQM. For such a huge cluster I tended at that time to not be trying to jot down PA or relative brightness. (Wish I had).

For my more recent visits to clusters and groups I do try to note any elongation and then note what 'tier' of brightness the objects is in where Tier 1 contains the brightest members and I usually don't break it down to more than 4 tiers. I'll then tend to note some relative sizes in respect to a key member or distinct star pattern in the cluster but generally don't try to estimate eyepiece FOV on such tiny cluster members.

Wonderful cluster to explore and thanks again for the charts.

Marko

[wvreeven]

Last night I has a look at this cluster with my 20" from SQM 21.0 skies. There was a strong wind which hampered my observations because my telescope motors have quite some backlash which makes the telescope sway in the wind. Moreover, the seeing was poor with stars appearing as balls instead of points at 256x. Still, I made a crude drawing on my iPhone which I redid on my iPad with a stylus. Here are both that drawing and an annotated version. There is a lot of room for improvement, but I only recently started trying to draw objects, so I am actually quite pleased with the result.

2083

2084


Clear skies,

Wouter

[Robin]

The Leo Galaxy Cluster seems to be quite popular these days. :-) I observed it last weekend at a star party in central Germany. The density of galaxies in this cluster is amazing. Please find attached my sketch of this cluster. I observed it with a 12" Dobsonian at 169x magnification.

Clear skies

Robin
2101