May 2020 Monthly Challenge!

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KingClinton
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May 2020 Monthly Challenge!

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Post by KingClinton »


MAY 2020 MONTHLY CHALLENGE!


Thank you for all the great suggestions that were put forward for this months target and for those that participated in last month’s challenge, it was a blast! :text-thankyoublue:

For this month's draw we used a online random draw generator to pick the winners.

And our winners are, M101 for the Northern Hemisphere and NGC 5139 for the Southern Hemisphere!


M101, NGC 5457, Face on Spiral Galaxy in Ursa Major, 7th magnitude.

Besides it being included in the now famous Charles Messier catalogue it was also observed by a few other distinguished persons.
William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse was a keen astronomer and observed and sketched M101 with his 72 inch telescope in 1851. At the time he and his contemporaries still thought these were nebula and were unaware of it being a spiral galaxy, his descriptions match it wonderfully.
For more on the 3rd Earl of Rosse see the wiki link below and also a link to his sketch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_P ... l_of_Rosse
http://www.messier.seds.org/more/m101_rosse.html

The image below is taken from Stellarium and shows the general region in which to find M101.
M101-border.jpg



NGC 5139, C80, Globular cluster in Centaurus, 3rd magnitude.

NGC 5139 has a rich and illustrious history.
It is the brightest, largest and most luminous globular cluster in orbit around the Milky Way. It is thought to be the nucleus of a dwarf galaxy that has merged with the Milky Way in the past.
Ptolemy mentioned it in the mid 2nd century AD, Johannes Bayer assigned Greek letters to it’s brightest stars in 1603, he also designated it as Omega Centauri, Edmond Halley listed it in 1677 as a luminous patch, Lacaille added it to his catalogue in 1755 and John Herschel finally correctly identified it as a globular cluster in the 1830’s.
Included below is a link to the wiki page for more information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_Centauri

And another Stellarium image showing the general region and the location of NGC 5139.
Omega-Centauri-border.jpg
And that wraps up this month's targets! :D


Please add the target or targets to your observing or imaging lists and have some fun with them, we look forward to your visual reports, sketches, images or anything else you wish to share.
Thank you and have fun out under the stars wherever you may be!

:observatory: :observer:
Eyeballs, binoculars, sketch box, Scopes n stuff.
Some people don't understand why I love astronomy so much, I cannot understand why they do not!

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Graeme1858 Great Britain
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Re: May 2020 Monthly Challenge!

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Post by Graeme1858 »


KingClinton wrote: Fri May 01, 2020 6:12 pm William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse was a keen astronomer and observed and sketched M101 with his 72 inch telescope in 1851. At the time he and his contemporaries still thought these were nebula and were unaware of it being a spiral galaxy, his descriptions match it wonderfully.

A great choice for May!

I went to Ireland a couple of years ago just to see the 72" Leviathan! A magnificent piece of engineering!

Regards

Graeme
______________________________________________
Celestron 9.25 f10 SCT, f6.3FR, CGX mount.
ASI1600MM Pro, ASI294MC Pro, ASI224MC
ZWO EFW, ZWO OAG, ASI220MM Mini.
APM 11x70 ED APO Binoculars.

https://www.averywayobservatory.co.uk/
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