The Caldwell Objects

at 16 million light-years. If you succeed in seeing
Centaurus A with the unaided eye — and I think
every amateur south of the 30th parallel should
try—you will join an elite club of fellow
Earthlings who have helped to expand our natural
visual envelope.
Countless millions of skywatchers witnessed
a rare sight in mid-April 1986 as Halley's Comet
brushed past NGC 5128. The view opened a
window on the imagination, allowing us to "see"
the awesome dimensions of space. Here was a
solar-system snowball millions of miles away
dwarfing a pair of colliding galaxies millions of
light-years away. And with a pair of binoculars
held just right, Omega Centauries glittering globe
joined the view. Fantastic! Truly an amazing
sight, one that anyone can still enjoy today, for
photographs of that passage abound. An even
greater spectacle occurred several days later. On
May 3rd, 1986 (Universal Time), the Rev. Robert
Evans of Hazelbrook, New South Wales —
history's greatest visual supernova discoverer —
became the first to spy an incredible stellar
explosion in
77
NGC 5128. The visual blast had achieved an
impressive apparent magnitude of 12.5 at the
time of its discovery, and it appeared smack-dab
on the galaxy's dust lane, 2' east and Γ south of
the galaxy's nucleus. It also appeared just in time
for countless amateur astronomers to witness the
aftermath through the monster Dobsonian
telescopes set up at the Texas Star Party (which is
held each spring on the Prude Ranch near Fort
Davis, Texas, in the shadow of McDonald
Observatory). Supernova 1986G was the first
supernova discovered in Centaurus A.
While comet hunting from Hawaii one
evening with the 4-inch at 23x, I encountered
NGC 5128 (without knowing what it was) and
my heart nearly stopped. My gut feeling was that
I had discovered an enormous comet with a
parabolic hood and a dark shadow cast by its
nucleus onto its broad dust tail. But once I looked
up at the sky, I realized where I was, and what it
was. Still, I was utterly amazed at how dark and
obvious the dust lane appeared with so small an
instrument. So I grabbed a pair of
The Caldwell Objects 309