Galaxy season is upon us — the time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere when Earth’s nightside faces out of the plane of the Milky Way. This week, Astronomy magazine Editor Emeritus Dave Eicher invites you to explore some of the best galaxies on offer in Leo, Ursa Major, Coma Berenices, and Virgo. Clear skies!
Video transcript:
Welcome to This Week in Astronomy, brought to you by Celestron, the world’s leading manufacturer of telescopes. I’m Dave Eicher, editor emeritus of Astronomy magazine.
This time, I want to talk about something you may not know about. It’s a really great time to have a front row to see galaxies in our springtime evening sky. It’s the best time, really, to look at the nearby clusters of galaxies to us. A lot of bright galaxies are in the sky in the evening right now, so head outside on one of these evenings when you have a nice, clear, dark night, face to the east and use a wide variety of instruments that you have — your Celestron telescope, you may want to use large binoculars. You can see some of the brightest galaxies even in binoculars.
Start by looking to Leo for a great group of three galaxies that are very close together in a group on our sky. This is M65, M66, and NGC 3628. This so-called Leo Triplet offers contrasting types of galaxies. They lie about 35 million light-years away, this group, all in the same low-power field.
Ursa Major, not too terribly far off in the sky, contains two really bright galaxies that are also very close to each other, visible in the same low-power field. These are M81 and M82. M81 is one of the brightest galaxies in the entire sky; it shines at about seventh magnitude. And in the same low-power field, you can see one of the brightest eruptive galaxies in the sky. This is M82, which is an edge-on starburst galaxy. It’s undergoing significant internal upheaval.
The constellations Coma Berenices and Virgo, looking toward the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, offer huge numbers of galaxies that can be seen mostly in telescopes — the brightest ones also in binoculars. Some of the best are the edge-on spiral NGC 4565 and the Virgo Cluster galaxies M61, M87, and M100. But there are many, many galaxies in this area of sky.
So, good luck spotting the faint light from distant galaxies. It’s galaxy time — galaxy season — so get out there with your Celestron telescope or even binoculars and see if you can spot a few distant island universes. I’ll see you next time.
