| Description | Undated entry by Méchain from late March or early April, 1781: "Nebula between the stars Omicron of Bootes & Iota of the Dragon [Draco]: it is very faint; near it is a star of the sixth magnitude." The entry was published without confirmation and without a measurement, although Messier's personal copy of the Catalog contains a handwritten location. Méchain disclaimed this observation in a letter to Bernoulli, written May 6, 1783, and declared it was an erroneous re-observation of M101. However, Messier's location and the description both point to NGC 5866 as the likely target. <--> This is an edge-on lenticular galaxy with a well defined dust lane bisecting the disk. Deserves more than 10m but cut short by clouds. Originally imaged by me as part of the CN EAA Challenge for September '23. |
