Bennett 1

Post by **rcj** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 11:52 am

Here's a rather strange object in Sculptor, termed Bennett 1 from the Jack Bennett catalogue of southern objects. Similar to Charles Messier's motivations, Jack Bennett was a comet hunter from South Africa and compiled a list of southern 'fuzzy' objects, with Bennett 1 as the first entry, otherwise also known as NGC55. This galaxy is actually an barred spiral viewed edge-on, and about 5 million LY distant. It is extremely dim and was hardly viewable even on focus mode, so this is just a curious attempt to see "what's there" from the local balcony. It looks like a pencil!

Luminance: 55 minutes

Post by **Airconvent** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 6:54 pm

yup..that's faint Remus. Don't think I would be able to see it visually on an 8" in Mersing! Thanks for sharing..

mrngbss · Post by **mrngbss** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 9:18 pm

When you said the object is very dim to focus, is your gain settings set to a high setting already? Or it is still around the usual default settings? During focus mode, does the view brighten up a lot. Then when you are ready to take pictures, the view darkens back?

jiahao1986 · Post by **jiahao1986** » Sat Oct 13, 2007 10:41 pm

Great shot!!!!

This galaxy is also easy and very beautiful visually. Last time in Mersing I and Alfred viewed it through a C9.25, extremely impressive! To me it's even better than NGC253!

Post by **rcj** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 12:31 am

It was dim in the sense that i could hardly make out the profile of the galaxy on focus preview mode, unlike ngc253. Atlases list it having a surface magnitude brightness ranging from 8.4 to 10. But i think it was especially harder from my balcony because it was "sat" right in the heart of a specific light pollution dome in the south... during focus preview, my settings are usually default, and dynamic range set to auto...it will stretch where needed. I am not sure what you mean by going dark when taking...but i cannot see the exposure until once it is finished. Even so, the stretch is auto, but by then, the profile of the galaxy is easily seen. So as such, when it comes to taking objects like this, or faint RCW nebulae, the trick is to make sure you know where you are star hopping to, and this is where you will need good databases such as The Sky6. Uranometria is not enough. Have not tried millenium though. Another great help would be to always have a reference image in the same laptop, so that you can compare star fields, and it will be a sign to indicate where your focus mode region is.

mrngbss · Post by **mrngbss** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 8:30 am

I see thanks!