I looked at this galaxy a couple of weeks ago with the 5-inch ETX125PE and was surprised to have seen it. Saturday night I looked at this galaxy once again with my 4-inch TV102 refractor and was once again surprised by the viewing of this galaxy. Yes it is a very bright galaxy but I live in what is considered to be a white zone on the light pollution map. The sky was clear and transparent but I could only see naked eye stars down to about magnitude 4.1 so seeing this galaxy is attributed to the transparent skies of winter. A view like this could not be acheved in the summer time with it’s haze and humidity. The central core area is much brighter and can be seen with direct vision as a fuzzy spot while the outer regions can only be seen with averted vision tapering to nothing. I estimated the size of the galaxy to be 5 to 6 minutes long by approximately 1 minute wide in the center.
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buddybarbee 