NGC/IC Project Restoration Effort

===== NGC 1313 24" (4/4/08 - Magellan Observatory, Australia): this was the first object I took a look at using the 24" f/3.7 as it was the brightest galaxy I had yet to observe. I was amazed to find a striking, two-armed barred spiral with obvious bright HII knots in the arms! At 200x the main body of the galaxy appeared as a bright oval or wide bar ~4.5'x3.5' oriented SSW-NNE with a central bulge. A relatively short spiral arm emerges from the south-southwest end and hooks towards the northwest. Embedded with this extension is [PES80] 5/6, a brighter elongated HII knot, ~30"x20". A mag 15 star is west of the northwest end of this arm. Just east of the north-northeast end of the main bar is [PES80] 1, another brighter HII knot, ~30"x15" and oriented E-W. A faint star (or stellar knot) is less than 1' NW. This bright HII region is embedded in a diffuse arm that curves gently east-southeast from the north end of the bar. After the bright knot, this extension dims but ends at [PES80] 3, a third bright knot ~15" diameter, which is isolated the end of this arm (nearly due east of the core). The HII designations are from a 1980 study of HII regions by Page, Edmunds and Smith in MNRAS, 193, 219. NGC 1313A = ESO 83-1, lies 16' SE, and appeared as a fairly small, thin edge-on oriented 4:1 SSW-NNE, ~0.6'x0.15'.