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Lists of suitable galaxies to observe with a Faulkes telescope About the lists The data The lists are all Excel spreadsheets. Click here to find out what information is given about each galaxy. The galaxies have been selected from the Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies (RC3) (de Vaucouleurs et al 1991) Getting a preview image of a galaxy You can use an astronomical website in France (called SIMBAD) to have a look at a black and white image of any galaxy that has already taken by another telescope. This will give you an idea of whether you want to observe it with a Faulkes telescope or not. Click here for instructions on how to do this. Interactive lists There is an additional interactive version of each list. You can type a date and time into this to find out which galaxies will be visible from both Hawaii and Australia. After doing this you will need to press F9, and wait while the spreadsheet recalculates (this might a few seconds). The azimuth (bearing) and altitude of each object in the sky at both telescopes is also calculated, and the object is marked as being observable if the altitude is 30 degrees or more. (Nearer to the horizon than this the atmosphere degrades the image.) Making observing lists Having entered the date and time on an interactive list, you can click the button labelled Make lists for this date and time and it will sort the galaxies and produce two new lists with the galaxies visible in either Hawaii or Australia at the top, making it easy for you to plan your observing session.
The galaxy lists Downloading a list To download a list, right-click on the link and choose to Save target to a suitable location on your hard disc. All the brightest galaxies 494 galaxies of all types with magnitude brighter than 12. Very brightest spiral galaxies - any orientation 323 spiral galaxies with magnitude brighter than 12 and greatest diameter above 1.5 arcminutes. Galaxies with all orientations from face-on to edge-on are included. Bright spiral galaxies - any orientation 993 spiral galaxies with magnitude brighter than 13 and greatest diameter above 1.5 arcminutes. Galaxies with all orientations from face-on to edge-on are included. Bright, near face-on spiral galaxies 131 spiral galaxies with magnitude brighter than 13 and greatest diameter above 1.5 arcminutes. Only those with a ratio of the longest to the shortest axis less than are 1.155 shown - this corresponds to a viewing angle of less than 30 degrees for a disc shaped galaxy. Bright, near edge-on disc galaxies (spiral and lenticular galaxies) 105 spiral and lenticular galaxies with magnitude brighter than 13 and greatest diameter above 1.5 arcminutes. Only those with a ratio of the longest to the shortest axis greater than 3.86 are shown - this corresponds to a viewing angle of less than 75 degrees for a thin disc shaped galaxy. Bright lenticular galaxies (disc shaped galaxies that are not spirals) 254 lencticular galaxies with magnitude brighter than 13 and greatest diameter above 1.5 arcminutes. Bright elliptical galaxies 212 elliptical galaxies with magnitude brighter than 13 and greatest diameter above 1.5 arcminutes. Irregular galaxies 292 irregular galaxies with greatest diameter above 1.5 arcminutes. Make your own selection from the 23,000 galaxies in the RC3 catalogue (Recommend for advanced users only.) Click here for instructions. Download the complete revised RC3 catalogue in its original form (Recommend for advanced users only.) To download the complete catalogue, right-click the following link, and choose to save the target to a convenient location on your hard disc. Then unzip the file.
The RC3 catalogue contains many more data fields than those included in the above lists. Click this link for a spreadsheet giving details of all the fields.
Richard Beare, Institute of Education, University of Warwick 2nd February , 2006 |