Hunting galaxies in Leo the Lion

Leo the Lion is one of the more recognizable constellations in the April sky. It is also a great place to point a telescope and try your hand at deep sky observing.

The “deep sky” is what astronomers call the realm beyond our solar system; it is populated with galaxies, nebulae and star clusters in abundance.

As winter turns to spring, our evening sky turns away from the plane of the Milky Way. Our view is directed into deep space where we find external galaxies unhindered by the obscuring gas and dust of our own galaxy.

Their unimaginable distance from us renders them rather faint, and they can be quite challenging for the novice observer. Leo contains some of the sky’s brightest and easiest galaxies and several are visible in small telescopes.

First, however, you must temper your expectations. Put those fantastic Hubble telescope images of galaxies out of your mind and prepare yourself to see what these objects looked like to the visual astronomers who first discovered them.

I confess that some observers may be disappointed. Distant galaxies are little more than a dim smudge of light in the telescope and for some, that’s all they are. It is with our mind’s eye that their true wonder is appreciated. When we contemplate that within that tiny smidgen of illumination is an unimaginably vast expanse of stars and planets, of gas and dust, and of limitless potential for life, we can’t help but be captivated.

The challenge of seeking them out, to find them for ourselves and see them with our own eyes, is what appeals to the amateur astronomer. Leo is a great place to discover if galaxy hunting appeals to you.

To find Leo, look for a group of stars shaped like a backward question mark or a sickle high in the April sky. This is the face and mane of the lion, anchored by the bright star Regulus. The tail of the lion, the star Denebola, lies 24.5 degrees to the east (left) of Regulus. That’s more than 50 full moons away!

To see a lion in the pattern of stars, think of the Sphinx in Egypt. He’s facing west, and a little imagination will enable you to pick out the stars that represent the lion’s body and folded legs.

The two bright stars that form the rear leg of the lion stand nearly in a vertical line on April evenings. Just a little below that leg are a pair of galaxies that are visible as a faint patch of “nebulosity” in a good pair of binoculars. This is the place to start.

The nearly matched pair of spiral galaxies are known as M65 and M66. The M in the name refers to Charles Messier, an 18th century astronomer famous for his catalog of nebulae and star clusters. In a telescope, M65 and M66 appear as round glows with brighter centers. Larger scopes will show an even fainter halo beyond their cores and some may even reveal the faint wisps that trace their outer spiral arms.

The two form a remarkable triplet with a third galaxy, an edge-on spiral, that appears as an elongated streak. These massive star cities, each similar in size to our Milky Way, are about 35 million light years distant. When we look out into space, we are looking back in time; the light we see left those distant galaxies long before humans walked the earth.

Further west under the belly of the lion are three more Messier objects: the galaxies M95, M96 and M105. A good star map will help you locate them. If finding them gives you a sense of accomplishment and the urge to search for more deep sky treasures then, welcome to the ranks of the observational astronomer!

April has something for the “shallow sky” astronomer too, especially if you’re an early riser. The bright planets Mars and Saturn will have a close pairing in the southeastern sky in the hour before dawn. They begin the month just a single degree apart. They will share the sky just above the “teapot” of Sagittarius all month. As the month goes on, they will drift apart and brighten each morning. It’ll be a fine show.

It depends. My personal preference is for a 12” or larger telescope. But you are talking about something that isn’t easily mobile, and will cost over $1000. But you will see something other than a smudge when looking in the eyepiece.

Having said that, it is hard to locate anything in the night sky to look at. I have seen people buy great telescopes and give up because they had no idea where to point it. You can get a telescope that finds and tracks objects, but it is more money and more complex.

10 X 50 binoculars are not a bad bet because they can be had for less than $50 and have a wide enough field to actually find something. Next up from there would be a six or eight inch telescope for $250 to $350, but again, your biggest challenge will be finding something. Don’t bother with a 60mm refractor like you see around Christmas, it is a waste of time for anything other than the moon and maybe Saturn.

But if you live in the city and don’t want to drive a couple of hours, forget it. Every moron in the world is buying lights and turning them on while they go to sleep. There is no more night sky withing 70 miles of any largish city, and you really need to drive about ten times that distance to see what your grandfather saw.

I personally prefer paper charts (or at least PDF on my tablet) to using electronic anything, but, my new-to-me scope has Sky Commander Digital setting circles, and a blu-ray connection to Sky-Safari 5 on my tablet. It also has a Tel-rad instead of a proper finder, something I hope to fix soon.

If all is working right, I can either look up items on the sky commander and it will tell me where to point, or, I can use the tablet to find an item and point the scope. I mostly use it to tell me what I am looking at.

I can find 95% of the Messier objects by memory, it’s the NGC objects I can’t remember too well.

If you are going to have one app for astronomy, Sky Safari is the best by a LONG shot.

My drive is 54 miles.

There are lots of things to see even in an Urban setting.

I am part of the “Urban Astronomy Club” run by the Astronomical League. It requires you to find (no go-to or digital setting circles) 100 objects from a specific list. It includes brighter galaxies in Virgo, so, it can be a challenge.

I did this with a 10” Meade from my front and back yard when we lived in the middle of Savannah, Ga. Not a large urban area, but, within a couple of miles of the downtown area, two hospitals, and a shopping district. I also could count 17 streetlights from my back door. I was lucky to have a small patch that I could set up in that was shaded by trees, though I did have to block one with a beach umbrella on a poll.

I ALWAYS tell folks just starting to get those 10x50 binoculars and go out and learn the sky. If you like it, then get a good scope. If not, then, you still have a great pair of binoculars for use for other things.

Another good idea is to look around for a local Astronomy Club too. Get them to let you look through the different scopes they have and it may help you decide.

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