April 4, 2018

M102 or NGC 5866 (March 2018)


This galaxy is known as NGC 5866 and probably is the 102nd item in Messier's list of not-comets.  There is some historical dispute about 102 being a duplicate of 101, but what I've read suggests that it is not.  I don't think anyone who had seen both through the eyepiece could believe these two were the same object.  M101 looks like a faint but fuzzy patch, or several of them, and M102 looks like a single flying saucer. Also, they are just not that close to each other.

M102 is about 47 million light years away.  We see it in the constellation Draco.

To the left and down from M102 is galaxy NGC 5866A, which is only about 27 million light years away, not connected at all to M102.

This image is 23x480" (just over three hours) with the SXVF-H9C through the ONTC-Synta Newtonian.

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