NGC 1187 Spiral Galaxy in Eridanus
Spiral Galaxy
Location: Rush Valley, Utah
December 26th, 2011
Charcoal on Black Paper
The night after Christmas was clear so me and my observing buddy and friend Mat went out to the West Desert here in Utah for a night of observing. I am working on the Eridanus and Fornax Galaxy Clusters right now and this one was a good place to start. I used my 27mm Panoptic as my finder and the galaxy popped right out with it. It was large, spacious and somewhat faint. I then moved to a 10mm Pentax XW and found more detail. The nucleus is stellar with a bright core region around it, surrounded by diffusion. Using averted vision popped the core. Fun object to find, observe and sketch. I used my Orion XX14i on this object, which is a 14 inch truss dob. The conditions were clear, cold, about 15 degrees and the seeing is rated at an Antoniadi II.
Jay,
A beautiful sketch on a cold clear night.
Frank 🙂
Nicely done Jay. Very smooth and soft detail you’ve laid down. The off-set position of the galaxy in the frame is a really good touch. It gives your sketch movement and a sense of immediacy that the galaxy is about to drift out of the field of view.
Well done.
Alex M.