60 ASTRONOMY • APRIL 2020arms — f loats through space roughly
30 million light-years from Earth. Use
high magnification to increase the con-
trast between the galaxy and the bright
star. NGC 404 looks round (6.1' across)
and bright with an intense center.
Now head south from NGC 404 to
magnitude 10.5 NGC 584, a fat, lens-
shaped galaxy in Cetus. You’ll find it 2.2°
northeast of magnitude 3.6 Theta (θ)
Ceti. Through an 8-inch scope, you’ll see
the broad, bright core taking up three-
quarters of the galaxy’s length. A bright
halo lies outside the core, but it quickly
fades to the black of space. NGC 584
measures 4.1' by 2'.
Next, move on to the Fornax Dwarf,
discovered by American astronomer
Harlow Shapley in 1938. At a distance of438,000 light-years, it is one of the Milky
Way’s nearest dwarf companions. Look
for it not quite 3° southeast of magnitude
4.4 Beta Fornacis.
Although the dwarf ’s magnitude of 8.1
indicates a bright object, its size (12' by
10.2') is such that it covers 17 percent of
the area of the Full Moon. Its surface
brightness, therefore, is low. Through an
8-inch scope, use an eyepiece that yields a
1° field of view, and slowly sweep the area.
What you’re looking for is a faint haze
just brighter than the background sky.
Our next target is a pair of ellipticals
in Eridanus: magnitude 9.8 NGC 1407
and magnitude 10.9 NGC 1400, which
lies about 12' to the southwest of its part-
ner. A magnification of 100x through an
8-inch telescope will show both objects
well. No matter the size of your instru-
ment, you will not see details other than
a thin halo around the brighter galaxy.
NGC 1407 lies 1.5° southeast of the mag-
nitude 5.2 star 20 Eridani.In the spring
A new season brings a galaxy that travels
in elite company. M105 lies only 0.8°
north-northeast of the great spiral M96
in Leo. Beyond that, this magnitude 9.3
doesn’t offer observers much in the way
of detail. The galaxy has a bright centralregion surrounded by a halo with an
edge that’s difficult to define. Although
M105 appears circular at low magnifi-
cations, crank up the power past 250x
and you’ll see that it’s a fat oval about 4'
across, orienting northeast to southwest.
If you’ve located M105, you probably
have seen magnitude 9.9 NGC 3384,
which sits a mere 7' to its east-northeast.
Through any size telescope, you’ll see
NGC 3384 as an oval twice as long as it
is wide (5.4' by 2.7') oriented northeast-
southwest. The central region is large
and bright, and the outer halo appears
faint even through large scopes.
For our next elliptical, magnitude 9.7
NGC 4125, head north from Leo to
Draco. NGC 4125 forms an equilateral
triangle (extending northward) with the
top stars in the bowl of the Big Dipper,
Dubhe and Megrez (Alpha [α] and Delta
[δ] Ursae Majoris, respectively). The gal-
axy lies 8° from each of those bright
stars. Through an 8-inch scope, you’ll
see a bright, broadly concentrated oval
core with a surrounding haze measuring
6.1' by 5.1'. Larger apertures extend the
length of the elliptical galaxy, and some
observers have even noted a nearly stel-
lar nucleus.
It’s easy to confuse M84 and
M86 in Virgo. Both lie midway
between Denebola (Beta Leonis) and
Vindemiatrix (Epsilon [ε] Virginis).
M84 lies a bit more to the west, but M86
is bigger and brighter. It glows at magni-
tude 8.9 (compared to 9.1 for M84) and
measures 12' by 9.3' (compared to 5.1' by
4.1'). M84 has few distinguishing charac-
teristics. Its core is large and definitely
nonstellar. Look for a fainter halo that
surrounds that core. M86 proves that not
all elliptical galaxies are circular. In fact,
it appears oval even at low magnifica-
tions. Modern galaxy classification
schemes lean toward M86 as a lenticularM86
The Fornax Dwarf
M105 and friends
GREG MORGANBERNHARD HUBLCHUCK KIMBALL