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    Comprised of an interacting pair of galaxies, the Ring-Tail, aka Arp 244, is an intriguing summer object for moderate to large aperture telescopes. It is located in Corvus the Crow, about 3 ½ degrees WSW of g Corvi (the NW star in the quadrilateral of stars that most amateurs recognize as Corvus). Although both of the component galaxies are 10^th magnitude visually, I did not find them to be particularly easy in my 8" SCT. They have low surface brightness and were low in the southern sky. Also, I use Uranometria which doesn’t plot stars fainter than 9^th magnitude, which didn’t help. A few fainter stars would have made nailing down the Ring-Tail’s position much easier for me. But after carefully gauging about 6 minutes SSE of a 9^th magnitude star, the mild apparition of the Ring-Tail materialized.

    My first impression was merely of a pretty faint, oval glow of about 1 or 2 minutes in size, but patient observing and switching eyepieces back and forth gradually revealed more. Kepple and Sanner’s The Night Sky Observer’s Guide (NSOG) states that a dark notch should be visible on the SW side, so that’s what I first started searching for. No luck! However, while alternately staring the object down and then using averted vision, it become obvious that there was a nearly stellar concentration on the WSW side. An additional brightness continued sort of eastward from there – then I realized that the Ring-Tail was actually much bigger than I originally thought: a very faint section to the north could be seen with averted vision! Now the Ring-Tail appeared nearly circular and definitely uneven. As it turns out, my initial observation was merely of NGC 4039, and only after a while did NGC 4038 also become apparent.

    Larger scopes should reveal fascinating detail in the Ring-Tail. The notes in NSOG for 12/14" scopes describe it as bright, bizarre, and shaped like a shrimp! Under sufficiently dark skies, I’d bet a 6" telescope could grab the Ring-Tail.