Viewing Favorite Springtime Galaxies in the Heavenly Backyard

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Hi everyone, I'm Pat Procop out in my heavenly backyard garden. It is springtime now and our view of the heavens is looking away from the core of our galaxies. That means we're looking outward into the depth of space and out there many many galaxies to gander upon.

[00:00:20]I'm going to look at some of those galaxies through my EON telescope and also my Celestron telescope. So, welcome to heavenly backyard astronomer.

[00:00:31]>> [music] >> Yeah, this time of the year looking toward the direction of Leo the Lion and Virgo the Virgin, there just so many galaxies out there to choose from. One of the groups that intrigues me the most is the triplet in Leo. That's M65, M66, and NGC 3628.

[00:00:59]The hamburger nebula, a lot of people call it. Looks like a hamburger. Anyway, I wanted to capture those with this telescope here. It has a focal ratio of F7 and a focal length of 910 mm. That should be able to fit the trio of these galaxies into the one view with this setup right here. So, looking at that, I wanted to take a picture of the triplet in Leo. So, let's talk about that.

[00:01:27]Here's the triplet in Leo in the constellation Leo the Lion and these galaxies are about 31 to 35 million light-years away. Each galaxy contains somewhere about 200 billion stars similar to the size of our own Milky Way galaxy. I was recording the image here in Nina the other night and I was using the SVBONY off-axis guider the OAG. I just purchased this and I was very impressed with the the guiding I was getting from this. I was down to an RMS of.58.60.

[00:02:02]Very very pleased. Anytime I'm less than 1.0, I'm very happy with the guiding at this focal length of 910 mm. Anyway, these were 5-minute images and you can see how clear and round these stars are.

[00:02:14]Here's the final picture here in PixInsight. There you can see the three galaxies, spiral galaxies M65 and M66 and the hamburger galaxy there. Meanwhile, not too far away in Leo still near the upper back of Leo is a galaxy called NGC 33 44. And this galaxy is about 20 million light-years away. A little less than 20 million light-years away.

[00:02:46]Very you can see it with the EON telescope. A very small target indeed.

[00:02:52]But but it's definitely a face-on spiral galaxy.

[00:03:00]And with the triplet in Leo, the hamburger galaxy always fascinates me and I wanted to see what it looked like with the larger focal length of the Celestron telescope here. Has a focal ratio again F7, but the focal length here now is up to 2154 mm. And that should give me a nice close view of this strange galaxy that looks somewhat like a hamburger. And also nearby, there's another galaxy up in Leo among the many. This one is NGC 3344.

[00:03:34]I wanted to see what that one looked like with the bigger telescope and see how this face-on galaxy appears.

[00:03:43]So, here's the hamburger galaxy as seen through the Celestron telescope. That's a focal length at time was at 2128, I think. Something around there.

[00:03:56]About 2100 mm a long focal length indeed, but it uh it certainly shows the hamburger galaxy in full view at this focal length of 2100 mm. Anyway, what about NG3 NGC 3344?

[00:04:13]And here it is in the Celestron telescope. You can see the difference between that and the EON telescope. The EON telescope had that as a very tiny face-on galaxy, whereas in the Celestron telescope with that again long focal length here, you can see a definitely huge spiral galaxy, but it's very small in the field of view. But with the larger focal length, it does appear much much larger. All right, let's move along and take a look at M51, a grand spiral galaxy with a companion galaxy as well. And this galaxy here is up in Ursa Major near the tail of the Big Dipper the Big Bear Major Ursa Major and uh interesting galaxy is also known as the Question Mark Galaxy.

[00:05:05]M51 is about 23 and 1/2 million light-years away. And uh not too far distant in the sky in the constellation Canes Venatici, we have M63 and that is the Sunflower Galaxy. And the Sunflower Galaxy is a beautiful galaxy to to observe. And this is the view from the EON telescope. So, you don't need a really long focal length. It helps, but you don't really need a long focal length to capture this galaxy right here. Also in this field of view, you can see a couple other galaxies floating about far off in the distance. You got one over here, one over here, one over here just to spot a few. There's potential one right there.

[00:05:53]Anyway, there we have the M63.

[00:05:58]In my opinion, the best type of telescope to use for imaging the galaxies is something like an F7 to an F10 with a longer focal length. You need this longer focal length simply because these targets are quite small in the telescope. If you're using a fast scope with F5 or F3 or F2 even, they're going to appear very very small. Of course, not if you're shooting the Andromeda galaxy. You're you're going to need the short focal length and the lower focal ratio, but most of these galaxies are very very small and the longer focal length is very very helpful.

[00:06:37]Meanwhile, with all these galaxies I'm looking at and talking about, I have to address that elephant in the room.

[00:06:45]Intelligent life, is there? What do you think? What are your thoughts about intelligent life in the galaxies that we image? You know, sometimes when I'm imaging these galaxies like the other night I was imaging the the hamburger galaxy, I was thinking, I wonder if there's intelligent beings looking back at the Milky Way galaxy and saying, I wonder if there's intelligent life out there in that galaxy over there. What are your thoughts? Leave your comments below in the comment section.

[00:07:15]Of course, we do have other galaxies in and about the sky. Way up into the north, you have M82 and M81 up in the Ursa Major area once again. And there you can see it. And looking at the view from the Celestron telescope, this is M82.

[00:07:34]It has that Well, the Cigar Galaxy. I kind of like calling it the exploding Cigar Galaxy with this flare of hydrogen alpha red gases shooting out from the core of the galaxy itself being pulled away from the images from M from the galaxy pull of M81.

[00:07:55]And here's the combination of the two.

[00:07:57]There's M81 M82. And the gravitational pull from this galaxy here is affecting the core of M82. But definitely a great picture to and target to focus on during this galaxy season. All right, we have the one of my favorite galaxies M104.

[00:08:19]M104, this one's located much further south in the sky and uh M104 is in the constellation Virgo, part of the Virgo Cluster. And but it's way off in the distance. This is about 31 million light-years away. And it's a almost edge-on galaxy that we see from this view here.

[00:08:43]This is from the the EON telescope, the 100 the 130 mm refractor has a focal length of 910 mm. All right, what about uh of course, a target that's just boggles the mind is the Markarian Chain of galaxies. And there you can see all these galaxies out there. They're about 55 50 to 55 million light-years away.

[00:09:09]And it just just boggles the mind is showing a sample of what's out there in the universe.

[00:09:18]With so many galaxies in this vicinity, are you shooting any of these targets right now? And if so, which ones?

[00:09:25]Leave your comments below in the comment section.

[00:09:30]And along with all these galaxies, we still have the nebulosity to to peer at.

[00:09:34]We have the Orion Nebula still visible if you hurry up. It's sinking low in the western sky right now. But rising in the eastern sky early in the morning, we have Messier 16, one of my favorites.

[00:09:46]It's the Eagle Nebula and within the Eagle Nebula, you have the famous Pillars of Creation. And well, I tell you what, this one is just loaded with color and a lot of hydrogen alpha showing off the reds and also there's oxygen 3 in there too showing the blues.

[00:10:04]It's always a great target to image through the month of late April all of May going into June. Well, I want to thank all of you for watching and supporting my channel.

[00:10:17]Remember the the heavens they're filled with majestic wonders and they're all in a sky near you. So unless you need rain and boy we need rain here in the southeastern United States. Unless you need rain, clear skies everyone.