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In the northern sky there is a small constellation that is too often overlooked. The stars that make up the constellation may be dim, but it contains some of the finest objects in the sky for viewing through a small telescope. The name of the constellation is Canes Venatici, which is Latin for "hunting dogs". They are the dogs of Bootes, the herdsman, and their names are Chara, and Asterion, as depicted in the 17th century artwork of Johannes Hevelius below. If you notice the illustration doesn't quite match the sky map, it's because Hevelius always drew the constellations backwards, as if they were on the outside of a celestial sphere surrounding the Earth.
To find Canes Venatici, start with the Big Dipper. Follow the arc of the dipper's handle to the bright golden star Arcturus, the fourth brightest star in the sky. From there you can trace out the form of Bootes, and just in front of the herdsman, nipping at the heels of the great bear Ursa Major, are the dogs.
The first object to point your telescope at is M3, the third of over 100 mysterious nebulous objects catalogued by the famous Charles Messier in the 18th century. The only thing Messier knew about it at the time was that it was not a comet, because it didn't move. Now we know that M3 is a globular star cluster, over 100,000 light years away, one of hundreds of mini galaxies that surround the Milky Way, and it is one of the biggest and brightest of these clusters, making it a splendid sight in a small telescope. It is, in fact, visible to the naked eye as a hazy star. But even a small 6 inch scope shows it to be a concentrated mass of hundreds of thousands of stars. The colour enhanced NOAO image below shows what it looks like through a much larger telescope.
The next object to look at is M51, the famous Whirlpool Galaxy. A large bright galaxy visible as a dim star to the naked eye, M51 is 35 million light years away. The fact that it is tilted 90 degrees to our line of sight makes it one of the best galaxies to view in a small scope. The spectacular image below was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Click on image to enlarge.
And if you're feeling adventurous, you could look for the other three galaxies noted on the sky map. They are all easily distinguished in any backyard telescope. Good hunting!
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