PGC galaxy corrections
Patrick J. Madden Mar 13, 2002
Hello Bill!
Thanks for fixing those PGC galaxies that Guide mis-plotted as stars. I am going to unzip the fix-file next time I go out to the observatory. (I am still running Guide7 on my home computer, Guide8 at the observatory). I am pretty sure that I have seen some of those galaxies in the photos that I take. I'll be looking at my photo, and say, "That sure looks like a little galaxy." So then I'll call guide up to the same spot in the sky (usually right near an NGC object I am photographing for supernova patrol), and often there will be a star there, or even 2 or 3 faint stars in a line. I used to think, "I guess it's just a few faint stars real close together, and my little 5" scope is having trouble resolving them." But I'll be a lot of them really ARE galaxies! So I'm not "seeing things!" This gives me all kinds of new self confidence in my observing abilities. I had no idea 80,000 galaxies were misplotted as stars!
Pat Madden
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]