This object is also identified as the "UFO galaxy", and resides on the boundary of the constellations Lynx and Cancer. There are no bright stars nearby, which makes finding it a little bit harder, although it has quite a high surface brightness of 9.8 magnitude. The edge-on galaxy of W-E direction has a clearly visible core that seems asymmetric: looks as if it's getting wider Eastward.

The famous double galaxy of Ursa Maior is an easy target with any kind of telescope. The brighter M81 spiralgalaxy can be detected even in the finderscope. Its smaller and fainter companion, the irregular M82 is interesting especially when looking at larger magnification levels, with several clearly detectable dense areas. Looks best when having a FoV of at least 1°, as in that case both of the galaxies can be fit into one picture. The nearby NGC 3077 is also worth a look, although it's even smaller and fainter than the M82.

This spiral galaxy is one of the brightest galaxies in Cancer, with a luminosity of 11.8-13m according to catalogues, however to me it looks much brighter than this, with an especially easily noticeable bright galactic core. The almond-shaped star city is small, yet an easy target thanks to the three nearby bright stars.

This triplet of galaxies always make me smile: I'm calling it a "dumb face" cluster. The M65-66 double is a classic, easy Messier-object: both can be well seen - perhaps the latter having a brighter, almost star-like core region. It's not clear for me why the NGC 3628 was left out of Messier's catalogue: it's not at all a difficult object either. Its brightness is quite close to that of M65 and while wandering around looking for its more famous companions, you may most probably bump into this one also.

Shiny, elongated galaxy near the famous Owl-nebula. Its core looks almost like a star, I estimate a brightness of around 12m. More dense parts are visible, the most notable is the very shiny area towards the Western end of the galaxy.

The spiral galaxy of M51, better known as the Whirlpool-galaxy is one of the most famous Messier objects. Thanks to its position and high luminosity, it's a very easy and impressive target. The spiral arms of M51 look beautiful and sharp, and with a little patience you can see even the bridge of matter between it and its interacting companion (NGC 5195), also with direct vision.

With a little exaggeration, there are more galaxies in the hair of Berenice than stars: wherever you look, the FoV is abound with tiny, faint spots. For me an especially remarkable place is the area bound by NGC 4158, 4216 and 4208. The brightness data of catalogues should be handled with care: almost all of the galaxies are brighter than suggested by the given numbers. The nearly edge-on galaxy of 4216 is the nicest with its brightness of 10m. With a FoV of around 1 degree, 6 beautiful shiny galaxies are glittering together, of which the three brightest must be visible also with smaller scopes.

Large, spectacular spiral galaxy with a gross magnitude of 8.4, two magnificent arms and a very shiny core. Elongated towards N-S, which is also the direction of the two arms. The Southern arm looks brighter, while the Northern one larger and blurred. Only a quarter degrees away you can find its easily detectable companion, the NGC 4248 (12.5m). If you can see this tiny galaxy, you should take the chance to look around the M106 in a radius of 1-2 degrees, and observe the other members of the galaxy-group named after it. Around half a dozen of the smaller galaxies are brighter than 4248, and only a couple are similar or fainter.

A gigantic, greatly elongated galaxy, visible totally from its edge on. It covers an area of about 13' x 1.4' on the boundary of the constellations Draco and Boötes. It has a homogeneous colour, even its core is just slightly brighter than the rest of its outside territories. When looking at its shape, it's very clear why it is commonly referred to as the Splinter galaxy.

The trio, also known as the "Draco group" is just like an illustration for a book to show the variety of galaxies: it consists three totally different galaxies lined up on line from East to West. Some details about these galaxies westward: the huge NGC 5985 (11m) is a nearly face-on spiral galaxy. Plenty of its arms are visible even with direct vision! Its galactic core is not really bright. This is followed by the tiny NGC 5982 (11m) which is an elliptic galaxy with homogeneous surface and a very bright, star-like core. While drawing these, I've noticed that something just appears more to the West: it was the faint NGC 5981 (13.2m), another spiral galaxy, but with edge on. If I were just taking a small glimpse instead of taking the time to sketch this area, I'd have surely miss this gem. This is why sketching is wonderful: it is what makes observation complete!

Faint galaxy that looks pretty small, it only gets brighter near its tiny core, but that core is very bright compared to the rest of the body of the galaxy. The 11.1m luminosity that is stated in catalogues I find exaggerated. Its core resembles a blurred star, and according to my estimation, has a brightness of about 13.6m, while the average surface brightness of the galaxy I estimate at 14.1 magnitudes. Its shape is slightly elongated ellipse in the SW-NE directions, with a visible size of 2' x 2'10".

Two spectacular galaxies of similar size but different look, in a nice pattern, about perpendicular to eachother. NGC 7332 is a bit larger and much brighter, however visually I've seen it slightly smaller than its fainter companion. A reason for this might be its starlike, bright core, that is washing away the dimmer areas, and to which I estimate a brightness of about 12.7m. The galaxy is losing brightness smoothly toward its outer boundaries. NGC 7339 however does not have a starlike core, its surface looks perfectly homogeneous, it's has a shape of a cigar: faint and highly elongated. It has sharp edges. I estimate a surface brightness of 13.2m. Their sizes are: 0.5' x 1.5' for NGC 7332, which is much smaller than what is stated in the catalogue (1.1' x 4.1'!), and 0.5' x 2.3' for NGC 7339. The photos I've seen make me certain that I'm right by the size estimation, because on these the galaxy pair looks quite the same by size.

NGC 7331 is a huge galaxy, elongated in the N-S direction, full of details. Its core is quite bright, raising out towards the West from the galactic plane. The Eastern side of the galaxy looks much larger, the whole surface seems strongly asymmetric. I estimate the brightness of the core to 12.6m, compared to nearby stars using data from the Hubble Guide Star Catalog (GSC), whereas the average brightness of the surface of the galaxy I estimate at 13.5m, which means that it should be visible for most mid-size telescopes under good sky conditions. I measure a size of 1'x6', although according to the large bright galactic core I suspect that it would look much larger under better conditions. To the South of NGC 7331 near the end of the half hour sketching period I've started to see another very subtle little spot which occured to be NGC 7335. To my own estimations, I found it has a surface brightness of about 14.2m, and a size of 0.5'x1.2'. There are more NGC objects visible in the eyepiece, like NGC 7326, 7333 and so on, however most of these were identified later as stars or double stars.

This is a special galaxy, being totally edge-on, although this can be seen only on long-exposition photographs. Visually it rather looks like a smaller galaxy laying in a 45 degree angle. What I see however, is only the core of the galaxy and its nearest vicinity. This core is cut into two halves by the dark dust path of the galactic plane, which can only hardly be seen visually, but it is not impossible by using extreme large magnifications. For me it stayed hidden even with 250x, although conditions were not favourable for galaxy hunting. I estimate its average surface brightness to 13m, and its size 1x2.5', but it's obvious that the whole galaxy is much larger than this.

Large but faint galaxy in the constellation of Pegasus. It is described as a spiral galaxy in the catalogues, however this is not detectable visually: it looks like an elliptic galaxy elongated in the NW-SE direction, with a totally homogeneous surface and a very tiny core that only slightly outshines the galaxy surface. I estimate its brightness to 13 magnitudes, with a size of about 1'x2.5'.

Faint but still very spectacular spiral galaxy with an estimated brightness of about 12.3m. As I almost never read or view pictures of the objects I want to observe (so the photos in my memory will not change the picture I really see with my own eyes), because of its very asymmetrical shape I first thought that it must be an irregular galaxy, similar to the objects in Halton Arp's compilation of peculiar galaxies. Even its core area seemed to almost fall out of the galaxy itself. However, later on by examining astrophotographs it turned out that what I believed to be its core is in fact a bright foreground star and the real galactic core is in fact located in the brighter little densities near this "fake core". At smaller magnification levels (67x) the shape of the galaxy is easier to see, however by increasing the magnification, the sofar homogeneous arms start to show many details, especially with averted vision near the core. I measured its size as 4.5'x1'.

An interesting and very spectacular trio of galaxies in the constellation Leo. NGC 3222: the westernmost member is a really faint slightly elongated galaxy of about 13 magnitudes only. Its core is like a star, with quickly increasing luminosity. To the SW of this I can detect a faint little star in front of the galaxy. NGC 3226 and 3227: spectacular, closely interacting couple, no wonder it was included in Halton Arp's famous catalogue of peculiar galaxies with the number 94. Among them the latter is much brighter and larger with a star-like core which brightens quickly. The 3226 is the opposite of this with a really homogeneous surface and almost no visible core.

Faint but star-like core with a magnitude of about 13.5. The galaxy itself is faint, does not show any structures. This may be because of the terrible atmospheric conditions, as on astrophotographs it shows arms that seem quite an easy catch. These arms can only be suspected because of the slightly elongated ellipse shape, as the galaxy is in fact almost perfectly face-on - this means that the ellipse shape is formed because of the two arms in the N-S directions. An interesting feature is a bright foreground star.

The galaxy is also in Arp's catalogue with number 206 has an interesting bent shape thanks to the nearby interactive galaxy of PGC 32617. Its brightness is defined between 11 and 13.6m according to various sources, I estimate it somewhere closer to 10 magnitudes. Three foreground stars make the view more spectacular.

A truly gigantic galaxy even with direct vision, many sources indicate a surface brightness of 9.6 magnitudes, however it looks fainter than suggested because of the large surface area. I estimate a core brightness of about 11.3m and the surrounding areas of nearly 13.5m, therefore this may be an achieveable target for smaller aperture telescopes too. The farthest regions pop in and out with direct vision making it look like two laser beams leaving the core. With averted vision these regions show up clearly, and make the apparent size of the galaxy from large to huge! I estimate a dimension of 16' x 2'. This object reminds me of NGC 5907 (Splinter galaxy), however that has no such a sphere-like core.

The gigantic, shiny NGC 4631 (also known as the Whale galaxy) and its smaller and much fainter companion, the NGC 4656 (or Hockeystick galaxy) fit perfectly well in an eyepiece with at least 1 degrees of FoV, a very spectacular double. The 4631 is about 10m bright and just about to jump right out of the eyepiece, while the latter is much smaller with a brightness of about 11m only - estimated by me. Both galaxies are heavily distorted because of gravitational tidal forces between the two, not to mention that there's a tiny faint third companion very near NGC 4631 with the identifier NGC 4627 with a brightness of 13m. This galaxy remained hidden to me at this observing session and I could not make out the real hockey stick shape of NGC 4656 out either, possibly the bad transparency and seeing was not really helping me in this. The pair NGC 4631 and 4627 is also listed in Halton Arp's catalogue with number 281.

The UFO galaxy, take two. I've already sketched this galaxy back in March 30, 2008 (see here), but because of an unfortunate administrational mistake, I've give it another go tonight. :) The UFO shape can hardly be noticed - if this galaxy resembles a UFO, then we could call all edge-on galaxies UFO's. However, the object is very nice, large and very bright, and the star rich environment makes the view even nicer. Its core brightens up slowly, a starlike core can be barely recognized. It looks as if there was a faint arm to the north of the core. Another interesting point is that although the stars are about at the same spot on the two sketches, the West direction indicator is at really different positions. I should check this out later.

If Ursa Major and galaxies, everybody thinks on M81 + 82. However, this constellation is full of spectacular galactic companions. One of them is this pair: interesting to see two such a different galaxies so close to eachother. NGC 4041 is a faint face-on spiral, NGC 4036 is a brighter edge-on elliptical galaxy. The 4041 is especially spectacular because its core brightens up very quickly, so the entire galaxy reminds me of a cosmic fried egg.

A very spectacular interacting couple in an environment sparsely populated by field stars. NGC 3718 is much larger, a perfectly face-on spiral galaxy, that is also catalogued by Arp with number 214. It feels as if it has a much larger area than what can be detected by direct vision. To the East of the galactic core I notice a brighter arc, however apart from this little detail and the little bit brighter core it has a really homogeneous look. The smaller NGC 3729 shows the typical core area of an edge-on galaxy, however according to astrophotos, what I see is a bit tricky, and the galaxy itself is far from being edge-on.

A large edge-on spiral with intermediate brightness, highly elongated in the NNE-SSW directions near the famous double, Cor Caroli. It does not show much details like arms or dense spots, however its NNE side looks a little bit brighter and wider, which makes the entire galaxy look a bit asymmetrical. I estimate its average brightness at 12 magnitudes maximum, with an apparent size of 13' x 2'.

Bright but tiny galaxy of 10 magnitudes. Nearby you can find a similar but fainter object, NGC 5033. In a FoV of 1 degree, both galaxies can be seen together, although according to their small apparent size, at such a magnification level they look really insignificant. The NGC 5005 sits at the end of a lane of stars, has a quickly brightening core that does not end up in a star-like nucleus.

Only about 40' away from NGC 5005, you can find this small, faint galaxy. This one is the fainter of the two, less spectacular with a slightly brightening core. It is in fact a very spectacular spiral, but visually it's more like a simple elliptical galaxy. At its Northern end you can detect a faint star of 13.9m, which appears (especially with averted vision) to twinkle on the surface of the galaxy. It's brightness is measured at 11m.

A faint, but clearly detectable galaxy of about 12 magnitudes, with a tiny, star-like core. Near this, a faint little star can be noticed that seems to be a supernova, however it is only a bare foreground star. Compared with photographs, it seems that the area seen by me is in fact only the brighter region around the galactic core. The galaxy has even fainter outer territories that cannot be seen visually by me. With these, the area of the galaxy is about twice the size, but for now, I estimate an apparent visual size of about 3.5' x 0.8' only. The foreground star is encircled by the galaxy and it looks as if the latter would be darker around the star. However, this is obviously only an optical illusion. Apart from that, it still shows many details: brighter and darker areas. Because of this, it seems to be an irregular galaxy, yet it is in fact belongs to a rare sub-group of spirals.

A spectacular, faint pair of galaxies on the outer edge of the Virgo-cluster. NGC 4762: looks like a needle, a tiny galaxy with definitely brightening core bulb that's fullfilled in a little star-like core. It's a perfectly edge-on galaxy. NGC 4754: looks smaller and much fainter than its companion. It's a nearly face-on galaxy that looks like a diffuse elliptical galaxy with no details at all, except for the almond-shaped, softly brightening core. To the SW of this pair you may notice a third, even fainter companion galaxy, the NGC 4733 only about one full field of vision away.

A very faint, tiny little GX with an apparent magnitude of about 13.6-13 magnitudes. Its core is popping out strongly from the galactic plane and resembles an almond, although the Northern side of the core looks brighter, therefore it seems to be asymmetric. It demands high magnification levels. At 250x the shapes were easier to see, unfortunately because of the terrible seeing I had to step back to a lower power. Photographically it looks quite the same as NGC 4762.

An extremely faint pair of galaxies in a sparsely populated starfield, therefore it's recommended to have some experience with starhopping. The brighter one is the NGC 5859, that is a small edge-on galaxy. Its core is brightening slowly. To the NW you may notice a small foggy star which turns out to be the core of another faint galaxy, the NGC 5857. It's much fainter than its companion, and features a star-like core. It nearly touches the outer regions of the NGC 5859. The faintest star of the sketch is catalogued at 15.21m, which is considered to be excellent in such a terrible atmospheric conditions.

Bright, small galaxy near a very yellowish star, which I captured on a surprisingly cold night that offered an excellent transparency in the early evening hours near the village of Jászszentlászló, Hungary during the Kiskun Astro Camp. Its shape is not perfectly cigar shaped, but its northwestern end looks a bit truncated. Its surface is not entirely homogeneous: next to its gradually brightened yet not star-like core it shows many little details, changes in luminosity of its surface. SQM reading: 21.24 m/arcsec^2, 12°C. The faintest field star visible directly is about 15.1 magnitudes bright, the NELM was 6.5 at this time of the evening.

I've sketched this fantastic trio of galaxies during the Meteor Star Party 2009 in Tarján, Hungary. The two larger ones are the face-on NGC 7769 and the edge-on 7771, both with softly brightening cores. Next to 7771 a small fuzzy object is visible, which surprises me, since my printed star map (TriAtlas B, with a limiting magnitude of about 12) shows no other objects than the two large galaxies at this area of sky. But as I can clearly make out this bright diffuse spot, I place it on the sketch and can't wait to find out what I really saw. It turns out to be the NGC 7770, another faint galaxy of 13.6m. This value I find a bit misleading, because visually its surface is not this much fainter than its two larger companion galaxies. This discovery makes me really happy, just like when I rediscovered NGC 5981 of the Draco Trio. SQM reading: 20.91 m/arcsec^2.

This 12m faint face-on galaxy of 1' diametre resembles a globular cluster that cannot be resolved at all. Its core brightens slightly, but apart from this it shows no details at all. At about 7-8' to the East, a 9.7 magnitude star is shining in the FoV. This galaxy is also catalogued in Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies with number 212. SQM reading: 21.03 m/arcsec^2.

A really faint galaxy with an almond shaped slightly brighter core. Small, yet easy to find, located just next to a bright, 10 magnitude star. It shows an interesting ring-like feature on photographs, therefore some suspect that this is a spiral galaxy at its early ages. SQM reading: 21.02 m/arcsec^2 8°C.

This galaxy, also know as Mirach's ghost, not surprisingly is located near the bright star Mirach of the constellation Andromeda. Some have reported difficulties seeing this object, because although it's fairly bright, the glowing of the nearby Mirach easily outshines it. For me, it was visible easily from the start, but after I've increased the magnification to 250x, I was finally able to examine the structure of the galaxy without Mirach in the FoV. You may need eyepieces with good anti-glare coating to disturbing light rays. The galaxy itself is very small, round, with some suspectedly brighter details at its Northern corner, albeit this may be the result of an optical error only. SQM reading: 21.0 m/arcsec², 9°C.

This galaxy shows an almond-shaped bright core and an ellipse-shaped body, with some brighter bulge around the core as its only special feature. The NELM was quickly getting worse because of the rising Moon, so I'm absolutely sure it would show a much larger size under a truely dark sky, but this time I estimate dimensions of only 2'x0.5'. SQM readings (just to give you an idea how much the Moon adds to light pollution): 19.95m/arcsec² (Moon slightly below the horizon) down to 19.58m/arcsec² (Moon slightly over the horizon) just within a 30 minute timeframe.