Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - 43

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Binocular Highlight by Mathew Wedel
The Mouse and
the Lion
I
Zenith
'm a sucker for an underdog. I love small, dim constellations,
obscure objects, the shoulda-beenMessiers,
and the less popular neighbors of whatever's
on the " Best of " lists. I also like pushing my
binoculars, and myself, to see as much as possible.
Given all these proclivities, it might seem a little
ζ
0°
ε
odd that it's taken me this long to cover NGC 2903,
a barred spiral galaxy in Leo, the Lion. I don't see a
lot of chatter about this rather isolated gem, but at
magnitude 9.0 it's brighter than any of the Messier
galaxies in Leo other than M66, which just barely
edges it out at 8.9. NGC 2903 is an easy find, too:
Drop down 1.5° straight south from 4.3-magnitude
Lambda (λ) Leonis and look for a tiny wisp of
light. There's nothing else nearby, giving the galaxy
the lonely aspect of a mouse before the mighty
celestial lion.
Now, in all honesty, NGC 2903 is not going to
α
-20°
WHEN TO
0h
g Sou
USE THE MAP
Late Feb Midnight
Early Mar 11 p.m.
Late Mar
11 p.m.*
Early Apr 10 p.m.*
Late Apr Nightfall
* Daylight-saving time
punch you in the retinas. It's a challenge object in
7×50 binos, requiring dark skies and good dark adaptation.
The galaxy is an easier catch in 10×50s, but I
wouldn't call it obvious unless you jump up to 15×70s.
Instead, the thrill of hunting galaxies with handheld
optics is not the visual splendor of the views, but
the pleasurable tingle of reaching far beyond our
own Milky Way - 30 million light-years beyond, in
the case of NGC 2903. You can get a real sense of
the scale of the universe when the combined light of
billions of stars is compressed into a pale glow by
unfathomable cosmic distances.
One more nice thing about celestial underdogs:
Roughly a zillion of them wait to be discovered. Let's
get hunting!
¢ How would MATT WEDEL describe the tiniest,
faintest binocular galaxy? Still pretty mind-blowing!
sk yand tele scope .o r g * APRIL 2023 43
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https://skyandtelescope.org/

Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR

Contents
Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - Cover1
Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - Cover2
Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - 1
Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - Contents
Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - 3
Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - 4
Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - 5
Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - 6
Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - 7
Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - 8
Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - 9
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Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - 14
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Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - Cover3
Sky & Telescope - April 2023 QR - Cover4
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