The Caldwell Objects

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galaxy," she explains, "is the
reason I bought a 20-inch
telescope."
Christian Luginbuhl and
Brian Skiff see the galaxy's
western end tapering to a thin,
long point near a 13.5magnitude
star. Interestingly,
my eye tends to bend that
tapered point into a gracefully
curved tip that meets the star.
Certainly this is an illusion,
since photographs reveal the
tapered end warping ever so
slightiy in the opposite direction,
to the south. However, our
mind's eyes like to "connect the
dots." The galaxy's eastern end
has a smoother, rounded shape,
though larger telescopes show a
fainter extension sharpening
eastward to a point. Sinewy
dust ser-rates the galaxy's
interior portion, reminding me
of a giant clam's open shell.
Surprisingly, the 4-inch
shows 12.4-magnitude NGC
4627 quite well. During the
1998 Texas Star Party Houston amateur Al Kelly
attached a Cook-book 245 CCD camera to his
homemade 17½-inch f/4.5 Newtonian reflector to
image the faint light bridge connecting NGC 4631
to NGC 4627. Skiff originally verified the
existence of this feature photometrically, while
Houston amateur Larry Mitchell is the
128
first person known to have seen it with his
own eyes. (He since has shown it to me
through his 36-inch reflector.) This phantom
feature resembles a strip of transparent tape
adhering to both galaxies; it glows ever so
slightly above the sky background, looking
no more distinct than a patch of black ice.
Deep-Sky Companions: The Caldwell Objects