In this episode of Star Hopping with Kissimmee Park Observatory, we'll look at the Leo region,
and show you how to find these beautiful deep sky objects:
Messier 95 Messier 96
And the Elliptical Galaxy, Messier 105
Alright, Let's Go Star Hopping!
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Hey Hello Hi and welcome to Episode 47 of Star Hopping with Kissimmee Park Observatory!
I'm Dave Hearn, and I feel totally renewed to be your host.
In this series of programs we'll show you the most beautiful sights in the night sky,
and explain exactly how to find them with your binoculars or telescope.
Welcome to the first episode of Star Hopping in 2017!
I hope this new year brings you an increasing appreciation and enjoyment of the night sky.
And I will do everything in my power to let you do just that, with more Star Hopping episodes
with interesting deep sky objects to learn about and locate.
The new year will be bringing some changes to Star Hopping and Kissimmee Park Observatory
- all for the better.
We're going to be refocusing our internet presence a little better to support the Star
Hopping brand.
I'm in the process of acquiring a couple new domains, and if that's successful, we'll
be moving the Star Hopping show to its own domain and potentially to its own YouTube
channel.
We'll be keeping the Kissimmee Park Observatory website as is, but all the Star Hopping content
will be moved to its new home.
More details on that in the coming months.
Well let's move on to our Star Hopping episode for this week.
Later in the evening, after Orion, Canis Major, and Gemini are all flying high near the zenith,
we start to see the backwards question mark of Leo the Lion rising in the east.
As you may know, the rising of Leo is the sign that you will be starting to see galaxies
in your eyepiece.
All three of our targets this week are galaxies and they lie right in the middle of this regal
constellation.
We'll check them out, right after this message.
Star Hopping Target #1
Messier 105 is an elliptical galaxy found right smack in the middle of the constellation
of Leo.
The interesting thing is that it is a member of a small trio of galaxies that you can see
at the same time in your wide field eyepiece.
M 105 was discovered by Pierre Mechain in 1781, only few days after he discovered the
nearby galaxies M 95 and M 96, which we'll be seeing later in this episode.
But surprisingly, M 105 was not included in Charles Messier's original list, until 1947.
In telescopes, M 105 appears as a fuzzy ball, only 2 minutes of arc across, that gets brighter
near the center.
It is of type E1, and often studied as a typical representative of elliptical galaxies.
For more information about galaxy type designations, check out Episode 15 of Star Hopping, found
on our site at kpobservatory.org/SH015.
Shining at magnitude 9.3, Messier 105 is the brightest of an 8 minute of arc wide triangle
of galaxies that includes NGC 3371 and NGC 3373.
So let's locate this triangle of galaxies.
This is a bit of a challenging star hop, because there are not a lot of bright stars in the
center of Leo where the galaxies are situated.
We'll be starting at bright Alpha Leonis, otherwise known as Regulus, the beacon star
in the constellation, blasting at magnitude 1.4.
The first move is easy - move 7 degrees straight down to 3rd magnitude Rho Leonis.
Now not so easy going forward.
Move 3/4 of a degree downward to 5th magnitude 49 Leonis.
Now move about 4 degrees to the lower left to 5th magnitude I Leonis.
Now, to the upper left about 4 degrees away lies 5th magnitude K Leonis.
Draw an imaginary line from I Leonis to K Leonis.
Move to a point halfway between them and you should see at least M105 and NGC 3384 coming
into your wide field eyepiece.
With M105 on the upper right and NGC 3384 to the lower left, look downward to see if
you can pick up 11th magnitude NGC 3373.
Take note that this orientation may not be the same in your scope.
M105 is the perfectly round one.
This trio is part of the M 96 Galaxy Group, and its distance is about 32 million light-years.
M105 itself is a supermassive elliptical galaxy, with a diameter of approximately 35,000 light
years.
So I mentioned the two other galaxies that were discovered by Pierre Mechain just before
he located M105.
We'll find the first of the pair, right after this message.
Star Hopping Target #2
Messier 96 is a
medium sized spiral galaxy, spanning almost 8 minutes of arc across.
It also shines at magnitude 9.3, the same as M105, but it's much larger.
M 95, 96, 65, and 66 are all members of the same Leo group of galaxies.
M 96 appears to be the brightest, with a visual magnitude of 9.2.
We showed you how to find M65 and 66 in episode 14 of Star Hopping.
You can check out this episode at kpobservatory.org/SH014.
Locating M96 is a bit sketchy as there are literally no reasonably bright stars between
M105 and M96.
Luckily it is not a very long Leap of Faith; only about a degree and a half.
Move directly to the right a degree and a half and you will see this large spiral enter
your eyepiece.
When you view Messier 96, you'll see a bright oval, 8 minutes of arc across, containing
a brilliant core and a non-stellar nucleus, which means it is kind of diffuse, as opposed
to appearing as a pinpoint star.
The spiral arms are uneven both in brightness and in shape.
It has an easily seen dust lane which extends through the nucleus.
M96 lies about 41 million light years away, and has a diameter of over 66,000 light years.
The last target for this week lies only 40 minutes of arc away, which is just a little
larger than the visual size of the full moon.
We'll find it, right after this break.
Star Hopping Target #3
Messier 95 is a beautiful face on spiral galaxy, although it's significantly fainter that
M96, glowing at magnitude 9.7.
M95's claim to fame, at least recently, was that it was one of the galaxies examined
in a project of the Hubble Space Telescope, for the determination of the Hubble constant.
The telescope was used to look for certain types of variable stars known as Cepheid variables.
These observations were used to determine this and other galaxies' distances.
So let's find this face-on spiral.
So this is yet another leap of faith to find M95; there are no bright stars between M96
and M95.
But again, it's not far: move 3/4 of a degree to the upper right, and you should find the
faint glow of Messier 95.
Although M95 is considered a barred spiral galaxy, its spiral arms are nearly circular,
so it's type designation is "SBb" where "SBa" is as circular as they get.
As with it's close neighbors we have discussed tonight, Messier 95 lies about 35 million
light years from Earth.
Well these were three fairly prominent galaxies on the Messier list that I had not covered
yet in the series.
We started with Messier 105, which has two close neighbors in space and in the eyepiece,
NGC 3371 and NGC 3373.
Then we moved on with our first Leap of Faith to the brightest galaxy in this group: Messier
96.
Finally after our second Leap of Faith, we moved less than a degree to the upper right
to find the fainter galaxy of the pair, M95.
So that does it for this week's episode.
You can find the show notes on our website at kpobservatory.org/SH047, where you can
comment and leave any questions that you may have.
You can also contact me personally on Twitter @StarHoppingMan, where I'd love to assist
you with any astronomy or observing questions.
So feel free to reach out with your questions - I'm here to help.
Speaking of reaching out, I have a question for you all.
Throughout the Star Hopping series, I use many observing terms, such as Magnitude, and
distances in the sky such as Degrees and Minutes of arc.
Although I basically address these terms in context like comparing a specific distance
to the size of the Full Moon, I was wondering if I should dedicate an episode to really
digging into these basic terms.
Let me know how you feel about this, down in the comment section here on YouTube, or
in the comments on our show notes, or even by tweeting me.
I want to make sure I'm being clear enough for you.
Well thank you very much for joining me here in the New Year of 2017, and I'll see you
next time with more Star Hopping tips and tricks.
I'm Cassie, and I hope you've enjoyed star hopping around the Milky Way.
We'll continue to bring you these video astronomy tutorials every week on Thursday, and in their
podcast format on Fridays.
They will be designed to help you find deep sky objects that are up in the sky at the
time we post them on the Internet.
The reason we create these video and podcasts is to help beginning amateur astronomers learn
the sky and get more enjoyment out of their telescopes and astronomy in general.
If you have any requests or suggestions of potential targets in the night sky that you
would like to see us present, just let us know down in the comment section below, or
on our website blog.
Don't miss our free Field Notes for this episode, basically the script of the show,
with all the images and start charts we use for our star hopping activities.
You can get them for free at kpobservatory.org/FieldNotes.
If this is the first time you're checking out Star Hopping, and if you found this video
useful, please consider Subscribing to our Channel by clicking the Big Yellow Button
down there, click the Thumbs Up on the video, and please share this tutorial out to your
friends who like looking at stars.
Also, as I just mentioned, please feel free to leave any question or comment below, and
we will be sure to respond quickly.
Also, please follow KPO on Facebook, where we post all of our astrophotos and keep everyone
informed about upcoming astronomical events.
We'd love to hear from you to discuss all this great stuff up in the sky.
All the links to these places including our website kpobservatory.org, can be found below
in the Episode Notes as well.
And finally, if you feel this video provides you value, and if you'd like to see more,
please consider supporting us on Patreon, where for a small amount per video, you can
support our efforts and let us make even more great astronomy tutorials like this one.
Well thanks again for watching, and we'll see you next time on Star Hopping with Kissimmee
Park Observatory.
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