The Canes Venatici Cloud

The Canes Venatici cloud is a loose aggregation of galaxies, covering a relatively large region of sky. There is no distinct galaxy concentration, but some thirty to forty scattered spirals and irregulars. The brightest galaxies have total absolute 10#10 magnitudes of the order of 26#26. The similar velocities of most galaxies in the region, at a mean of 27#27, are a clue pointing towards the cloud nature of the galaxy distribution. This has been confirmed by photometric distance determinations, which have assigned individual distances between approx. two and eight Mpc to the galaxies in the cloud.

Figure: Map of the Canes Venatici cloud, with all known galaxies having corrected radial velocities less than 29#29. The galaxies are identified by their UGC or NGC designations.

28#28

The observations of the galaxies in this region were unfortunately hampered by bad weather. About half of the nights were lost, so I only successfully imaged fifteen galaxies during a 14-night run in March 1998 at the OHP.