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The Caldwell Objects

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32<br />

galaxy," she explains, "is the<br />

reason I bought a 20-inch<br />

telescope."<br />

Christian Luginbuhl and<br />

Brian Skiff see the galaxy's<br />

western end tapering to a thin,<br />

long point near a 13.5magnitude<br />

star. Interestingly,<br />

my eye tends to bend that<br />

tapered point into a gracefully<br />

curved tip that meets the star.<br />

Certainly this is an illusion,<br />

since photographs reveal the<br />

tapered end warping ever so<br />

slightiy in the opposite direction,<br />

to the south. However, our<br />

mind's eyes like to "connect the<br />

dots." <strong>The</strong> galaxy's eastern end<br />

has a smoother, rounded shape,<br />

though larger telescopes show a<br />

fainter extension sharpening<br />

eastward to a point. Sinewy<br />

dust ser-rates the galaxy's<br />

interior portion, reminding me<br />

of a giant clam's open shell.<br />

Surprisingly, the 4-inch<br />

shows 12.4-magnitude NGC<br />

4627 quite well. During the<br />

1998 Texas Star Party Houston amateur Al Kelly<br />

attached a Cook-book 245 CCD camera to his<br />

homemade 17½-inch f/4.5 Newtonian reflector to<br />

image the faint light bridge connecting NGC 4631<br />

to NGC 4627. Skiff originally verified the<br />

existence of this feature photometrically, while<br />

Houston amateur Larry Mitchell is the<br />

128<br />

first person known to have seen it with his<br />

own eyes. (He since has shown it to me<br />

through his 36-inch reflector.) This phantom<br />

feature resembles a strip of transparent tape<br />

adhering to both galaxies; it glows ever so<br />

slightly above the sky background, looking<br />

no more distinct than a patch of black ice.<br />

Deep-Sky Companions: <strong>The</strong> <strong>Caldwell</strong> <strong>Objects</strong>

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