A trip to Arizona Sky Village

I don't know how much longer I'll be able to travel because of my health, so I recently planned a trip at the end of October-beginning of November for five nights with my wife and brother to see some genuinely dark skies again. 

After much research, I settled on Arizona Sky Village (ASV), an enclave of perhaps 25 or so 4.5 acre properties in Southeastern Arizona. ASV was founded about 20 years ago by amateur astronomers Jack and Alice Newton, the self-described "Stargeezers," and real estate developer Gene Turner. The idea was to develop a place in a dark sky location that would help preserve those skies and give serious amateurs their own physical community. Other privately owned dark sky communities in the U.S. include Deerlick Astronomy Village in Georgia, Chiefland Astronomy Village in Florida, Mountain Skies Astronomical Society Astronomy Village in California, Chirucahua Sky Village on the west side of the Chiricahuas in Arizona, Goldendale Sky Village in Washington, and New Mexico Skies Astronomy Enclave. 

Oddly, ASV doesn't have a dedicated website, although one of the owners from the UK, who also rents his house, has a pretty comprehensive, although somewhat outdated, website. We rented a different house, which was great.

Location, location, location 

ASV is situated just on the eastern side of Arizona's Chiricahua Mountains, benefiting from the location with dark skies and lots of clear nights with generally good seeing. The village is an easy 2 hour 45 minute drive from Tucson International Airport (TUS), taking I -10 east just over the border into New Mexico, then heading south on New Mexico Highway 80, crossing back into Arizona, and taking paved roads for the last 10 miles to the entrance of ASV, which contains well-graded gravel-dirt roads. (Image from Google Maps)

Astronomers rule

The first thing we noticed on arrival was all the small observatory domes. Most, but not all, of the houses at ASV have either dome or roll off observatories. As my brother commented, "You can see who's in charge here." What a great feeling! 

The village has light restrictions that require inhabitants to avoid outside lights and keep their windows curtained or covered with blinds. The only lights we could see while observing at night were headlights of the few cars coming down the long slope of Highway 80 about 10 miles away and a few distant lights on homes or ranches, none if which were at all bothersome.

The house we rented did not have an observatory, but had subdued lighting inside, just enough to do the usual household things. I would recommend a headlamp or personal USB light for close work in the kitchen or reading. It was like having lights dimmed about halfway down. 

Even the refrigerator had a red light inside, although it was quite bright so you could easily find what you were looking for.

How dark is it?

We visited for five nights in late October-early November. The sky was about as dark as it can get. However, I have been in places where it was hard to walk around. Here the ground is mostly bare dirt, which shows up better than a grassy field at night, so we really didn't need red lights to walk around. 

There was a slight overall sky glow that I don't remember from other dark sky locations years ago, and this is apparently due to the solar maximum, as was discussed in this thread on Cloudy Nights. Makes sense to me. Nevertheless, the Milky Way showed good detail, but not as fine and impressive as I remember from my observing days in wildlife management areas in central Florida back in the early 1990s. Sadly, those same sites are much brighter today.

What few clouds appeared showed up black against the sky, a sure indicator we were under a truly dark sky.

In 15x70 binoculars, the vistas were superb. M24 (the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud), the Double Cluster in Perseus, and the area in Cygnus around Sadr were simply magnificent, but that could be said for any view anywhere in the sky. 

This is a cell phone shot I took of the Milky Way through Cygnus, centered on the North American Nebula (NGC 7000).

The only time I noticed any light pollution, other than a slight glow reflected on high clouds 150 miles to the east over El Paso, was while observing the Leo Triplet galaxies (M65, M66, and NGC 3628) around 4:30 a.m. The sky background was a light gray, rather than the familiar black. It was the zodiacal light, a reflection of interplanetary dust in the ecliptic from the soon to be rising Sun that is only visible from darker skies. In this sky it was an obvious cone of light stretching halfway up the sky. That's impressive!

At right, my cell phone shot of the zodiacal light through Leo (left center), with the Beehive cluster visible above and right of Leo, and Mars above that.

High desert environment 

ASV is 4,600 feet above sea level. The peaks of the nearby Chiricahua Mountains rise to over 9,000 feet. There was no dew (yay!), but it was quite dusty, as it hadn't rained for a while prior to our visit. The view out the back sliding doors of our rented house presented a fabulous vista of the entrance to Cave Creek Canyon.

The wind at ASV tended to be from the east during the day, shifting to the west-southwest at night. It was mostly around 5-15 mph, often a bit gusty. Knowing this would be the case, I brought a wind screen and we observed from behind that. It helped a lot, especially because it got into the 40s each night.

Of the five nights we were there, the first three were pretty much completely clear, the fourth cleared up around midnight with a few scattered passing clouds that didn't interfere with observing, and it rained hard the last night. Transparency was excellent, seeing was slightly soft but without turbulence.

Observations

We packed a pair of 15x70 binoculars, 10x50 binoculars, and a 6-inch collapsible f/5 reflector telescope. It was a joy to just sit back and peruse the sky in binoculars, but having the telescope really expanded the experience. In many cases, the 6-inch performed more like my 10-inch in semi-light polluted skies (Bortle 4 or 5) back home in Virginia. And did I mention...no dew?

We didn't have any set plans for observing, but did have a list of "must-see" objects that we might otherwise have forgotten. Of course, we checked out as many classic favorites as we could. We had the summer Milky Way in the early evening and the winter Milky Way in the early morning, with lots of great sights in between. Here are a couple of examples from my observing log:

We both took a look in the 15x70s, with the NPB narrowband filter on the left eyepiece and the right eyepiece unfiltered, at the North American Nebula and the Veil. The North American is really prominent and I can trace it easily. Canada is huge and bright, the brightest part. Also noticed a large blob of nebulosity north of M39. (I think this is the three degree bubble of nebulosity in Cepheus around IC 1396 that contains the Elephant Trunk Nebula.) The Veil is great. Again, the eastern part shows up better than the western part. (NGC 7000, North American Nebula, image by Nynyny, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Took a long look at NGC 55, an 8.8 mag galaxy in Sculptor. It's a large fat slash oriented almost east-west. Good view in 150x, the 10mm with the barlow. The western end is fatter and kind of rounded off a bit before it gets to a faint star that's offset a little bit to the south, and then another faint star more in line with the galaxy but further out. There's also a dimmer star just south of almost the center of the galaxy. The center is quite elongated and appears to be more mottled on the southern edge than the northern, although it seems pretty clumpy overall. The eastern end trails off more, almost comet-like, and is visible past about a 12th magnitude star just south of the line of the galaxy on the east side. A lot of subtle mottling in this one, even in the 6-inch, making it an interesting target to study in a sky this good. It's shaped like a minnow without a tail, just a trailing body. (NGC 55 image by ESO, CC by 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

We would often look up with the unaided eye and see a meteor every few minutes. The hourly rate of the sporadics exceeded some of the Perseid watches we've had in the past from not so great skies. When taking a trip to a dark sky, don't neglect just lying back and looking up. We spent nearly half the time either doing this or looking in the binoculars. My Bino Body Mounts really helped reduce fatigue while observing, and gave us nice steady views of some spectacular star fields.

Daytime activities

Cave Creek Canyon, the gateway to the Chiricahua Mountains, is only four miles from ASV, so there was plenty to see in the daytime. I enjoy birding, and the area is a well-known birders' paradise. I added several species to my life list, although spring would be the prime time for birding. We also spotted a herd of javelinas (collared peccaries), several jackrabbits, a coyote, and numerous Coues white-tailed deer, most of which were not shy at all.

We're just casual hikers, and there were several easy trails that provided great nature watching and spectacular views. Vista Point (above) is only a .3 mile trail, but opens up to a great 360 degree view of the canyon.

The nature trail that starts at the Visitor Center is a bit over a mile one way and terminates at Sunny Flat Campground, one of many primitive campgrounds (pit toilets, no hookups) in the Coronado National Forest. The view from Sunny Flat (left) is stupendous, with the rock formations towering over the campground.

Would I go there again? Lord willing and the creek don't rise, YES!

(All images by me unless otherwise indicated.)

Eyepiece cheat codes: Observing galaxies in small telescopes

When it comes to faint fuzzies, you either get it or you don't. A lot of people don't understand what the point is to look at these things that all just look like very faint grayish white blobs. Why not just look at images? If I have to answer that question for you, you probably should stick to imaging or stay on the sofa. 

Smaller telescopes, those about 10 inches or less, excel on open star clusters and some of the brighter objects in the sky, including some of the larger galaxies like M31, M81 and M82, and some of the brighter nebulas, like M42, the Orion Nebula, M8, the Lagoon Nebula, and M17, the Swan or Omega Nebula. But most galaxies tend to be faint fuzzies in the eyepiece, like my sketch of NGC 4762 below. 

The joy of searching for faint fuzzies 

A big part of the fun of starhopping is the hunt. Winding your way from a bright star through an interesting star field usually yields new discoveries that you wouldn't get if you just punched in an NGC number and your scope slewed right to the object. 

While I often jump from one object to another object in a different part of the sky, sometimes I like to relax a little bit and just get to know a specific area of the sky. I find little clusters, double stars, interesting asterisms, and other objects that I wouldn't otherwise observe. 

Push the limits

Usually where there's one galaxy, there are others. Many are out of reach of small telescopes, but there's a surprising number that can be seen, especially in a good sky. While there are calculated limits to what you can see in a particular aperture and sky, I recommend you take these only as guidelines. I've often seen objects that were supposedly beyond the limits of my telescope's capability. It's fun to push these limits. In my experience, the galaxies and details listed here can be seen with a 10-inch telescope and often smaller apertures in a reasonably dark, transparent sky with decent seeing and no Moon in the sky. (Image: A gravitationally lensed galaxy cluster imaged in the infrared by the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Vicente Estrada-Carpenter-Saint Mary's University.)

When I was much younger and I only had a 4.5 inch reflector, I spent some time looking for really faint objects. I saw some of them and others I could never find. But I learned about my telescope's capabilities and my own. I also began learning the sky, and I'm still learning and relearning it.

I remember seeing all five members of Stephan's Quintet, a tight group of very faint galaxies ranging from 12.6 to 14.0 magnitude near the larger galaxy NGC 7331 in Pegasus, with my 4.5 inch. Back then my eyes were better, and in a larger scope nowadays I have trouble seeing even a couple of the members. That helps me to understand how my eyesight has changed, and how the sky is getting brighter.

Above: Difficult but not impossible for small telescopes: Stephan's Quintet in Pegasus. (Fort Lewis College Observatory, CC-by-NC-SA 4.0)

Even looking at brighter galaxies, if you spend some time on them, not just taking a casual glance but spending 10 to 30 minutes, or even more, really examining them, you might surprise yourself how much detail you can actually see. 

Things to look for

When you first look at a galaxy, you might think to yourself, well, it is indeed just a faint fuzzy blob. Nine times out of ten, though, if you spend some time really looking at it, you'll start to notice there is more to it than first meets the eye. This is when you become a true observer. 

(Image: Astronomer Vera Rubin in her last year as an astronomy major at Vassar College, 1948. Rubin later found the first evidence to support the theory of dark matter through her study of the rotation of galaxies. Vassar College Archives and Special Collections)

Here are a few things to look for that will help you discern details you never thought possible to detect. 

• What shape do you see? Round, oblong, oval, thin, cigar-shaped, pointed ends, etc.
• What is the directional orientation of an elongated galaxy (for example, northwest to southeast)?
• What is the core of the galaxy like: stellar, slightly brighter, dramatically brighter, diffuse, etc.?
• Is there a central bulge?
• Do the arms taper to a point or are they stubby?
• Which points are likely foreground stars and which might be brighter parts of the galaxy (or even a supernova)? Good seeing and sharp focus can help you sort them out.
• What are the edges like: do they fade out slowly, are they ragged, sharply defined, etc.?
• Do you see any mottling, clumpiness, or variations in brightness across the galaxy?
• Any dark lanes or sudden cutoffs of brightness?
• Is one side of the galaxy different from the other or is it symmetrical?
• Can you detect any hint of spiral structure?
• Any nearby galaxies or other interesting objects in the neighborhood?

Tips and Tricks

• Most galaxies within range of small telescopes cannot be seen at all without using averted vision.
• Only the brightest central part of a galaxy may appear in the telescope compared to images, which aggregate the faint light of the outer arms or halo that is invisible to the eye. Features such as star clouds or supernovae may appear to be well outside the boundaries of the visible galaxy.
• Make a note of which direction is west, which will always be the direction an object drifts without tracking. This helps you orient yourself and describe a galaxy through sketching or taking notes, if you keep an observing log.
• Large, bright galaxies do well with lower power, but don't be afraid to try higher power for additional detail—it dims the galaxy but increases the contrast, similar to using a filter.
• Small, dim galaxies may not even be visible until you increase power, but tracking them can be difficult in high power if you are tracking manually, especially with a sparse star foreground. 
• Get a good look at the star field in low power and make a mental note of certain star patterns that you can use as markers if you get lost or you bump the scope. Pay special attention to those east of your target, which will come into view as your target drifts out of the field of view to the west. Use them like breadcrumbs to find your way back. Also make note where your finderscope is pointed.
• A zoom eyepiece is great for finding just the right power to see a galaxy best.
• Try sketching a few galaxies until you get a feel for how to make note of the visible features and can assemble them to form a complete picture in your mind.
• Some galaxies have a pretty bright listed magnitude, but have low surface brightness, in other words the brightness is spread over a larger area, so they may not be as easy as the magnitude would indicate.

The character of a galaxy 

The "tuning fork" diagram of galaxy morphology devised by Edwin Hubble and refined by Gérard de Vaucouleurs (Antonio Ciccolella / M. De Leo, CC BY 3.0):

Galaxies are classified by shape and activity. I've never really gotten into all the specifics of this, but in general, there are spiral galaxies, which include barred spirals like the Milky Way, there are lenticular galaxies, there are elliptical galaxies, there are irregular galaxies, and there are galaxies with active nuclei that can take any shape. 

Now do some observing

The following are some representative galaxies that show up well and often show some detail in 4 to 10 inch telescopes. Aperture is king when observing galaxies, so use the largest telescope you have access to. Even in very small apertures, just trying to spot as many of these as possible is an interesting observing project. These are visible at different times of the year. The darker and more transparent the sky, and the better the seeing (steady air), the more you will see. The images are included to give you an idea of the type of galaxy and features you can try to look for, but imaging chips and computer processing tremendously exaggerate all the features, color, brightness, etc.

Link to a Sky Safari Observing List for the galaxies listed below:

Astronomerica-Galaxies for Small Telescopes

This is in the Sky Safari .skylist format. Download to your phone or tablet and import into Sky Safari Pro or Plus. (See The Lumpy Darkness Blog for an explanation of how to do it.)

Spirals 

Spiral galaxies, the most common type of galaxy, can take on many different appearances, based on the angle from which we're viewing the galaxy. Because these are generally flattened discs with central bulges, the viewpoint can really affect their character, as well as how easy or difficult they are to see. 

Interesting edge-ons

I love thin edge-on spiral galaxies, as do many observers. There's something fascinating about seeing that thin slash against the darker background. Small telescopes can be used to see many of them well and appreciate their character. Here are a few.

M104, the Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo; look for a stellar core, the sharp edge of the dark lane on the southern edge of bright central area and the much dimmer glow on the other side of the dark lane (8.0 mag)

(NASA/Hubble Team/Hubble Heritage/Keith Noll/Kevin M. Gil, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is up.

NGC 4565, in Coma Berenices; look for the central bulge and the thin dark lane using high power; can you determine where the tips of the arms end? (10.4 mag)

(Brucewaters, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the lower left.

NGC 891, a large but surprisingly dim and ghostly edge-on in Andromeda; look for the full needle shape and vague clumpiness, which may only come to you after extended observation, south-southwest arm easier; a 12th mag star just on the other side of the core complicates the observation; the dark lane requires larger apertures (10.8 mag but very low surface brightness)

(C.Howk (JHU), B.Savage (U. Wisconsin), N.A.Sharp (NOAO)/WIYN/NOIRLab/NSF, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the upper left.

NGC 5907, a large, thin splinter in Draco; look for subtle detail in the center area in larger scopes; if you have a wide field eyepiece, see if you can fit spindle-shaped galaxy M102, to the west-southwest about 1.4 degrees, in the same field (11.1 mag)

(KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Brad Ehrhorn/Adam Block, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the right.

NGC 4216, nearly edge-on, within the Virgo Cluster (11.0 mag)

(Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona, CC BY-SA 3.0 US, via Wikimedia Commons) (NGC 4222, 13.9 mag, upper left, and NGC 4206, 12.8 mag, lower right) North is to the upper left.

NGC 3501, a tough one for the larger apertures in Leo not far from NGC 3507; a very faint slash in a sparse field that gives your eye a better chance of picking it up in averted vision now and then (13.6 mag)

(ANAKLO, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is up.

NGC 2683, in Lynx, nearly edge-on; look for a flattened nucleus, almost double-lobed, faster dropoff in brightness on the northeast arm (10.6 mag)

(ESA/Hubble & NASA, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the lower right.

NGC 4631, the Whale or Herring in Canes Venatici; try around 110x, look for much smaller and dimmer dwarf elliptical galaxy NGC 4627 (The Calf, or Pup), and while you're in the area, find the Hockey Stick, NGC 4656/7, a 9.6 mag disturbed barred spiral (9.8 mag)

(Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona, CC BY-SA 3.0 US, via Wikimedia Commons) North is up.

NGC 4244, in Canes Venatici; enjoy the thinness, you won't make out much else, check out NGC 4214 nearby (see below) (10.2 mag)

(Ole Nielsen, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons) North is up.

Face-on or nearly face-on spirals 

Some brighter face-on spirals offer the challenge of getting hints of the spiral structure and knots of star formation and nebulosity in darker skies with good transparency and seeing. A 10-inch will show the following details, but you may be able to pick them out with smaller apertures, depending on your sky.

M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy in Canes Venatici; look for the smaller galaxy, NGC 5195, as well as hints of spiral structure (8.4 mag)

(Todd Boroson/NOIRLab/
NSF/AURA/, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the left.

M61, a barred spiral in Virgo; look for a stellar nucleus and a semicircular dark lane just east of the nucleus, as well as a bright knot on the north side (9.7 mag)

(KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/
Adam Block, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the left.

M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy in Ursa Major; large with low surface brightness; look for a condensed core and non-uniformity to the surrounding glow; you may be able to pick out some of the brighter emission knots such as NGC 5455 out near the south edge of the galaxy, looking starlike in lower power, NGC 5447 and NGC 5450, which are right next to each other about the same distance from the core as NGC 5455, but toward the southwest (7.9 mag)

(NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio - KBR Wyle Services, LLC/Scott Wiessinger, University of Maryland College Park/Jeanette Kazmierczak, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) North is up.

NGC 3184, in Ursa Major; look for a brighter but non-stellar core, with hints of structure in the galaxy's outer glow (10.4 mag)

(Sloan Digital Sky Survey, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is up.

M83, in Hydra; best framed in low power; look for a very bright core that dominates the galaxy and hints of shading and structure in the arms; outer area suffers greatly from light pollution, 10.7/11.7 mag double star (8" separation), Herschel 4599, just on the southeast edge of the outer arms of the galaxy (7.6 mag)

(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) North is up.

Oblique-view spirals

M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is a classic obliquely-viewed galaxy, tilted somewhat from edge-on, northwest to southeast; look for the two satellite galaxies, M32 and M110, a dark lane on the west side of the nucleus, and possibly a fainter dark lane outside of that, as well as NGC 206, a knot of nebulosity far out on the southwest arm (3.4 mag)

(Steve Fung, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the right.

M33, the Pinwheel Galaxy in Triangulum, very large; spiral structure not discernible, but look for many clumpy areas, including the HII region NGC 604, which looks like a very faint galaxy way off to the northeast of the core, seemingly outside the galaxy (5.7 mag)

(Alexander Meleg, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the left.

NGC 2903, barred spiral in Leo, oddly not a Messier object; look for north-northwest to south-southeast elongation, impression of a bar, nucleus area somewhat broken up, mottling and clumping, including star cloud NGC 2905 just outside a slightly dark lane to the northeast. (9.0 mag)

(Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona, CC BY-SA 3.0 US, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the upper left.

M81, in Ursa Major; look for oval shape, stellar core, and possibly hints of a soft spiral structure including darker lane southwest of the core (6.9 mag). Also check out nearby M82 (see below) while you're in the area.

(KeithSteffens, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the lower left about 7:00.

Lenticulars

Lenticular galaxies occupy a spot in between ellipticals and spirals.

NGC 4026, edge-on lenticular in Ursa Major; look for a big bright central bulge that houses a supermassive black hole and well defined pointy ends to the arms, especially the southern arm (10.7 mag)

(Sloan Digital Sky Survey, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is up.

NGC 1023, edge-on barred lenticular in Perseus; look for nearly stellar round core (that also houses a supermassive black hole) (10.4 mag)

(NASA, ESA, and G. Sivakoff (University of Alberta); Image processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic University of America), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) North is up.

NGC 4762, edge-on lenticular in Virgo, look for a stellar core within an elongated central area (11.1 mag)

(ESA/Hubble & NASA, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons). North is to the upper left.

Irregulars, Peculiars, etc.

NGC 55, in Sculptor; look for a fat slash, trailing off more on the eastern end, giving it a comet-like or minnow-shaped (without the tail) appearance, clumpiness and mottling toward the center, especially on the southern edge (7.9 mag)

(ESO, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is up.

NGC 4214, a dwarf barred irregular in Canes Venatici; the bright northwest to southeast bar makes it look a bit like an edge-on with a halo around it (10.2 mag)

(Ole Nielsen, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons) North is up.

NGC 4449, an irregular starburst galaxy in Canes Venatici; look for a brighter elongated mass in the center but no real core, splotchy mottling and a bump off the south end, fainter outer rectangular glow as if it were a fat edge-on that someone snipped the ends off (10.0 mag)

(KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/John and Christie Connors/Adam Block, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the upper right.

M82, starburst galaxy in Ursa Major, close to M81; look for a pinched dark intrusion or lane cutting laterally, or diagonally through the center, brighter pinpricks in the central area, and irregular, mottled arms on both sides (8.4 mag)

(N.A.Sharp/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is up.

NGC 5128, in Centaurus, if you are far enough south to see it well, closest radio galaxy, also designated Centaurus A; look for a dramatic thick dark lane separating the glow into two lobes, making it look like a tall, skinny hamburger, much brighter southern lobe (6.8 mag)

(ESO/IDA/Danish 1.5 m/R. Gendler, J.-E. Ovaldsen & S. Guisard (ESO), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the upper right.

NGC 4490, Cocoon Galaxy in Canes Venatici, starburst galaxy just finishing an interaction with the smaller NGC 4485 (the pair designated Arp 269); look for a fat, elongated oval with pointy ends, well condensed but mottled core, small round satellite galaxy NGC 4485 to the north (9.8 mag)

(Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona, CC BY-SA 3.0 US, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the upper right.

Ellipticals

In terms of visible detail, ellipticals are the plainest. Other than shape and degree of condensation to the core, there's not much to see. I recommend doing some research before you observe them so you can just appreciate what they are. I've only included two here that have a little more to offer, being in close proximity to another galaxy and a bright star, respectively. Have at it.

M60, in Virgo; look for the smaller and much dimmer spiral galaxy NGC 4647 just off the northwestern edge of it (8.8 mag)

(Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona, CC BY-SA 3.0 US, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the upper left.

NGC 404, "Mirach's Ghost" in Andromeda; challenging observation because it is so close to the 2nd magnitude star Mirach, Beta And, hence the name; look for it about 7 arcminutes to the northwest by putting Mirach just outside the field of view (11.2 mag)

(Ole Nielsen, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons) Mirach is the bright star below center, NGC 404 is the much smaller object up and right from Mirach. North is up.

Active galaxies (Seyferts, Quasars)

NGC 3079, an edge-on Seyfert in Ursa Major, showing a fat cigar shape; look for subtle mottling and asymmetry in larger apertures (11.5 mag)

(KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Jeff Hapeman/Adam Block, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the lower right.

M77, a barred spiral, the prototype Seyfert in Cetus; look for the bright active nucleus and compare it to the nearby 11th magnitude star just to the east-southeast (8.9 mag)

(KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Francois and Shelley Pelletier/Adam Block, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) North is to the lower right.

3C 273, first quasar identified and the brightest, in Virgo; just look for it, you won't see any detail, just a starlike point, but you'll be looking at probably the farthest object you may ever see in your small telescope, at 2.4 billion light years (12.9 mag)

(Giuseppe Donatiello, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.) The quasar is indicated by horizontal tick marks. North is up.