2025-06-20

10:53PM

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My prior observation of M 102 was back in [[2022-07-17]]. At that time, I was using the Deep Sky Hunter Sky Atlas as my field atlas and it lists M 102 as a Messier object in Draco. Tonight when prepping for my targets, I noticed that Sky & Telescope’s Pocket Sky Atlas had M 102 curiously missing from its list of Messier objects.

As it turns out, there is some debate as to what Charles Messier’s 102nd object actually is. In his notes he did not include coordinates, they only say (translated):

“Nebula between the stars Omicron Boötis and Iota Draconis: it is very faint; near it is a star of 6th magnitude.”

It looks like some people believe that M 102 is actually NGC 5866 (what I observed tonight) and others believe that it is a duplicate entry for M 101.

Either way, the observation of the target was very good tonight. I took a risk and attempted my 3x Barlow at 165x and it paid-off.

I remember this being an edge-on galaxy but the pattern of glow around it at the FoV was deceiving. Using AV, I could see the strong central streak of light that is typically seen with edge-on galaxies, but I also noticed much more light surrounding the streak, both above and below.

11:26PM

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Lovely double. Another visible double can be found within the FoV. Prior observation was [[2022-07-20]].