Galaxies in Coma Berenices

Plus One Nebula

The clear evening of February 21st was a good opportunity to try Seestar's new mosaic mode on the Seagull Nebula in Canis Major. The following 60-minute exposure barely captures the relatively faint elongated Seagull Nebula running vertically down the image's left side. The brighter circular nebula on the right is NGC2327 which features a dark lane cutting into the center that ends on the bright blue star that powers NGC2327. It took much longer than 60 minutes to obtain this image because so many individual constituent frames were rejected due to poor tracking.

As temperature dropped to 27 degrees, I pointed Seestar to galaxy M85 in Coma Berenices. (All galaxy images below are the result of 30-minute exposures.) M85 is the brightest uppermost galaxy in the next image. The bright star just left of M85's nucleus is a foreground star within our own galaxy. Below and left of M85 is galaxy NGC4394.

On February 25th skies were clear and moonless again. I set out to capture the remaining five Messier galaxies in Coma Berenices. Galaxy M88, shown in the next image, is a tilted spiral. A pair of foreground stars appear on M88's lower edge. Three other dim galaxies are arrayed on a diagonal line beginning near the left center edge and stretching down to the lower right. In order, from upper left to lower right, they are NGC4516, IC3478, and IC3476.

The next image below shows face-on barred spiral galaxy M91. Near image bottom is another galaxy, NGC4571. 

Nearly edge-on spiral galaxy M98 is centered in the next image.

One spiral arm appears less tightly bound in face-on galaxy M99 shown next.

Finally, another face-on spiral galaxy, M100, shares the field of view with at least five other galaxies. Near the right edge is edge-on galaxy NGC4312. Near the left bottom edge is galaxy NGC4379. Just left of M100 are two dim galaxies: NGC4322 above slightly brighter NGC4328. The last dim galaxy is NGC783, well separated from M100 to the upper right. Enlarge the image by clicking on it to better see these faint galactic neighbors. 

It was fun to see face-on spirals emerge as exposures continued! Coma Berenices is home to many galaxies! After these two February observing sessions my Messier collection now includes 94 members with only 16 more needed to complete the collection. Galaxies in Virgo are the next obvious targets. These should add eight more to my collection.