|
 This
is an odd looking, obscure little galaxy whose primary claim
to fame is its appearance in a photograph in Burnham's,
although nothing is written about it. In a wide field
eyepiece it looks like a tiny round smudge near a distinct
grouping of stars. What makes this object interesting
in the eyepiece is that galaxies this small don't typically
have such a high surface brightness; for this reason its
appearance is more like that of a planetary nebula.
Even at high magnification it appears more like a planetary
than a galaxy, complete with a central star--the tiny nearly-stellar
core of the galaxy.
Users of
16-inch or larger instruments should use at least 400x to
look for the presence of dark lanes between the spiral
arms. In my 18-inch on an average night I was able to
see some mottling in the otherwise smooth disk, with a
relatively well defined edge.
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