Date:  August 18, 2012
Location:  Blue Canyon at 7600 feet
NELM: 6.5 throughout the night
Transparency: started at 43/5
Seeing: Average at 3/5

Telescope: 22” f/4.0 reflector on a Blandin equatorial platform
Eyepieces:   24mm Panoptic (finder eyepiece), 10 and 6mm ZAO-II’s, 10 and 6mm Delos and TMB 1.8ED Barlow

All object parameters in parenthesis are listed in RA, Dec, size and listed magnitude without commas.

Images are from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey or the Digital Sky Survey

NGC 6120 trio 

22” (230 and 383x) – Nice trio of galaxies arranged in a 30-60-right triangle.  Lies in a fairly rich star field.

NGC 6120   16 19 48.2   +37 46 29   1.0x0.7’   14.6p – Considerably bright diffuse slightly elongated glow with a slightly brighter center.  0.4’ long and PA = 30 degrees

NGC 6119   16 19 41.9   +37 48 24   0.8x0.5’   15.4 – Considerably faint small round glow with diffuse edges.  Even surface brightness.  0.2’ across.  A mag 14.7 star lies 0.3’ SW.

NGC 6122   16 20 09.6   +37 47 53   1.2x0.3’   15.3 – Considerably faint 3:1 elongated glow.  Even surface brightness.  PA = 150 and 0.5’ long.

UGC 10987 trio

22” (230, 383 and 690x) – Very compact trio of galaxies.  The west pair is a very close double galaxy while the third member lies just 0.5’ due west.  Only one member is charted by MegaStar.

UGC 10987   17 48 20.3   +17 56 53   0.5x0.4’   15.1 – Considerably faint slightly elongated glow with an off-centered stellar core.  0.3’ long.  Note: The elongated glow with an off-centered core is both galaxies (the other is uncharted A), but not resolved.

Uncharted B   17 48 18.2   +17 56 50 0.4x0.4’  ? (NED mag 16.34) – Considerably faint round glow with well-defined edges.  About 0.2’ across.