Notes:

Very windy. Temperature at 2 in the morning is 19.5℃ !! The remains of Hurricane Helene has arrived. This session was to observe Comet 38P/Stephan-Oterma but I can’t find it, so switching to a few Messiers.

Burnham’s says this object was never entered in Messier’s catalogue. This galaxy is oval, elongated 4:1 with the major axis aligned more or less NS. I can trace it out for a distance of about half the field of view, so about 25 arcmins, considerably more than the catalogue size. There is a round central bulge and within this a tight oval core elongated 2:5. The central bulge and core are not in the centre of the galaxy’s halo but offset a little to the N. On the E side of the core there is an inconspicuous dust lane or patch, unexpected in an elliptical galaxy. I am confident it is not a contrast effect between core and halo. A foreground star is in the halo S of the core.