The BAA Deep Sky Section has monthly objects of interest for us to have a go at imaging and this month's is the Local Group galaxy Leo II. Leo II is one of 24 known satellite galaxies of the Milky Way and was discovered in 1950 from an examination of the Palomar Sky Survey plates. It is a dwarf spheroidal galaxy that lies at about 210 kpc from our own. Four days ago on the 15th February after some dreadful weeks of cloudy wet weather we had a break in the clouds and I was able to have a go at imaging this galaxy. Fortunately, it was two days before new moon and the skies were nice and dark. I used my Dwarf 3 smartscope to observe this object and this is what I obtained after 253x15s (63.25 minutes) of integration:-
Leo II is the faint smudge of light in the centre of the field (you can enlarge this image by 'clicking on it'). With the Dwarf none of the stars in the galaxy are resolvable. This is not really surprising given the small aperture (35mm) of the Dwarf. Still, I was pleased that I could actually detect it. The first frame was taken st 22:45 UT and the last at 00:06 UT on the 16th. Midpoint was 23:26 UT. All auto parameters were used on the Dwarf and in the Stellar Studio for post processing. The image has been binned x2 and the gain increased in Photoshop slightly. Notice the galaxy to the right of the image. This is NGC3551 - an elliptical galaxy in Leo that is 150 Mpc from us (a tad further than Leo II). The bright star at the top left of the frame is 72 Leo which is an evolved bright giant star of spectral class M3II (you can see its organgey colour).
All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026
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