It's galaxy season

 tl;dr - A rare clear spring night allowed our astronomy group to capture 16 distant galaxies across the constellations Leo, Coma Berenices, Virgo, and Canes Venatici. Using a spontaneous observing approach and three-minute exposures, we explored the rich morphological diversity of galaxies under an exceptionally dark sky.

In spring we rarely have suitable weather conditions for astronomical observations. As so often, the exception proves the rule: in March and the first days of April 2026 we were blessed with quite clear skies. Thus, on April 8, we set out to fish for distant galaxies in the "deep waters" of the constellations Leo, Coma Berenices, Virgo, and Canes Venatici.

Spring is the perfect season for this endeavor. The winter Milky Way sets early, while the summer Milky Way does not rise until after midnight. This opens up a vast stretch of sky with little obstruction by dust and foreground stars. Here, where the North Galactic Pole lies, the line of sight goes straight out into the intergalactic emptiness: hic sunt galaxiae!

Image 1: The famous Sombrero Galaxy, a spiral seen edge-on featuring a prominent dust lane.

With a crew of five, our little observers' room felt unusually packed, and we found ourselves wishing for a larger computer screen. After completing all the usual preparations, we were ready to collect some far-traveled photons. We didn't bring a well-thought-out target list. Instead, we took a more spontaneous approach: we alternated in selecting promising objects using the free planetarium software Stellarium, deliberately avoiding zooming in too much—after all, we did not want to spoil the surprise. Patiently we waited for each three-minute exposure to finish before getting to see our randomly chosen extragalactic neighbors. We were rarely disappointed. The morphology of the members of the extragalactic zoo is surprisingly multifaceted. 

Image 2: 12 of the 16 galaxies we imaged within three hours of observation. Among them are well-known objects like the Sombrero galaxy, the Needle galaxy, and the Hamburger galaxy. Can you guess which is which?

While imaging, we also discussed the Hubble tuning fork (with all its modern and confusing revisions) and tried to familiarize ourselves with some of the less prominent spring constellations outside. As usual, the April sky turned out to be the darkest of the year with SQM values around 21.4 mag/arcsec².

Image 3: Fish-eye view of our observatory. Can you identify some of the constellations?

By the end of the session, we had 16 galaxy images on our hard drive. We mainly went for spirals and unfairly dissed the morphologically rather boring ellipticals (with the obvious exception of M87 and its remarkable black hole jet). 

At the time of writing this article, the rule has once more overthrown the exception, and the sky wears an unbecoming cloudy gray. Let's hope we won't have to wait until summer for the next opportunity to see some starlight again.

Christof Wiedemair