North entry into the Coma-Sculptor Galaxy Group
Galaxies in Coma Berenices are featured in Sue French's column in the May edition of Sky & Telescope. http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=3210 Finding members fo the Coma-Sculptor galaxy group (a sub-part of the Virgo Supercluster) has always been another difficult task for me. Getting oriented to the Com constellation under urban and suburban semi-light polluted skies and finding computer control stars for synchronizing a computer handbox to. It seems that the main stars of Com are either invisible and impossible to find under light polluted skies or in a dark sky site the region is flooded with faint stars. The 6 degree diameter Coma Star Cluster (Melotte 111) and related stars form a coat-hanger like asterism that provides a quick way to orient and handbox synchronize to 4.4 mag gamma (15) Com (SAO 82313, HD108381 HR 4737). The Coma Star Cluster is itself easily seen in 10x50 binoculars from urban light polluted areas. The cluster forms a coat-hanger like asterim: http://www.slas.us/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=3214 The celestial north end of the cluster terminates with two stars including 14 Com. The third-end point is gam Com - one of the primary stars in Com figure consisting of gam, beta and alf Com. Once located gam Com provides a handbox synchronization opportunity. gam Com is 3 degs from NGC4565 (Caldwell 38). The coat-hanger like asterism is evidence on many charts, e.g. - in Burnhams, on Macholtz's Messier Marathon Chart, and Tiron's Cambridge Star Atlas. Once gam Com is located, even under urban light polluted skies - an easterly right ascension sweep (using 14 Com and gam Com as a right-angle guiding reference line) across optical wide doubles including 31 Com and 41 Com allow quick location of beta Com (v 4.2, SAO 82706, HR4983, HD114710). The Coma "coathanger" provides an easy after-work practice target that will aid in locating more galaxies in the Realm of Galaxies during dark sky weekend sessions in late April and May. - Kurt P.S. - the Coma-Sculptor Galaxy Cluster has always been one of my favorites from a supragalactic structural point-of-view. Our Milky Way lies on soap-bubble film-like surface bewteen two major voids: http://fisherka.csolutionshosting.net/astronote/Clarkxref/img/3DUniv40Mpc1Vo... The Coma Sculptor Galaxy Group - in which the Milky Way sits is a close galaxy group member (colored red) in the north galactic hemisphere view of the Virgo Supercluster. The Virgo cluster (colored teal) is more distant: http://fisherka.csolutionshosting.net/astronote/Clarkxref/img/3DUniv40Mpc1.j... The Coma galaxy members of the Coma Sculptor Group reaches down to the Milky Way's plane, encompasses the Milky Way and then continues on into the southern galactic plane as the Sculptor galaxies. The effect can be seen on the Orion Deep Sky 600 map on the wall of the Ealing observatory.
Man, that's poetry! I really like Kurt's description, that the Milky Way lies on a soap-bubble, film-like surface between two major voids.
participants (2)
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Canopus56 -
Joe Bauman