NGC4535 (VIR) The Lost Galaxy - Catching a small glimpse of lost time

What’s in the picture(s) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_4535 / https://www.gktoday.in/topic/nasa-finds-the-lost-galaxy/
Quote: “NGC 4535 is a barred spiral galaxy located some 54 million light years from Earth in the constellationVirgo. It is a member of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies and is located 4.3° from Messier 87. The galactic plane of NGC 4535 is inclined by an angle of 43° to the line of sight from the Earth.

The morphological classification of NGC 4535 in the De Vaucouleurs system is SAB(s)c, which indicates a bar structure across the core (SAB), no ring (s), and loosely wound spiral arms. The inner part of the galaxy has two spiral arms, which branch into multiple arms further away. The small nucleus is of type HII, meaning the spectrum resembles that of an H II region.

During 1999, the Hubble Space Telescope was used to observe Cepheid variable stars in NGC 4535. The period-luminosity relationship for these objects yielded a distance modulus of 31.02 ± 0.26 magnitude. This corresponded to a physical distance estimate of 52.2 ± 6.2 Mly (16.0 ± 1.9) Mpc, which was consistent with distance estimates for other members of the Virgo Cluster

The Galaxy was discovered in 1785 by William Herschel who found the planet Uranus. An amateur astronomer Leland S. Copeland fixed his telescope lens on a distant galaxy in the Virgo constellation first in 1950s. He then witnessed an eerie spiral that was shrouded in dust. He named the spiral as “The Lost Galaxy”. The galaxy was termed as the Lost Galaxy by Copeland because then he had a glimpse of NGC 4535 using his small yard lenses.”

What was the experience
Early March, I had pointed my scopes mainly at the last Nebulae that were still visible in the night sky, before the spring sunshine and full moon was starting to make the nights shorter, and before the nightside of earth was starting to point at the deep vastness of space with a sight on the many galaxies, away from our Milky Way,

These galaxies are too small for my TS94 scope, although the Virgo area allows for a nice overview of the many galaxy chains and clusters that are floating in deep space. I had some ’spare’ time in my scope planning and decided to point the scope at one of the ‘bigger’ galaxies to avoid losing the observation time. NGC4535, a galaxy aptly called “The Lost Galaxy”

I consider this image mainly a try-out, a scouting to check out some objects. The L-Enhance is not the right filter for galaxies, but I didn’t switch it after catching the last nebulae. The image contains about 25 ‘known’ galaxies, including M49/NGC4472. NGC 4535 looks interesting enough to go after with my bigger TS140.

Time and weather permitting … maybe I will … some day 😎

How it was done
Scope: TS94 APO (FL 414mm)
Mount: EQ6-R Pro
Camera: ASI2600MC Pro
Photons: 20220308-0310 L-Enhance 180s 87x 4:21
Processing: PixInsight (Mac)

What have I learned from this
I didn’t expect very much from this data, knowing these galaxies are quite small in the field of view of my TS94. At first I was even wondering if it was worthwhile to fully process this, but the spiral arms are, although quite small in the image, nicely visible, triggering my interest to keep this one on my target wish list for my bigger scope(s). So, not really a loss of effort or observation time to have captured this “Lost Galaxy”…

Clear Skies everybody! 🤩✨🔭

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