On Feb 1, 11:19 am, "William C. Keel" wrote:
Among NGC galaxies, you may well be seeing the elongation/flattening
of the Local Supercluster, roughly centered on the Virgo cluster.
Gerard de Vaucouleurs was almost alone for years in claiming
this as evidence for structure on a scale larger than obvious
clusters. He even defined a coordinate system aligned with this
"supergalactic plane" (which runs almost perpendicular to the
Milky Way plane)...


Larry,

I think Bill's answer is correct that you are seeing the nearby
galaxies along the Supergalactic Plane. If you can, change the
magnitude limits until you find the optimal setting, and the string of
galaxies from Ursa Major down though southern Virgo show up nicely. I
have shown this effect to others using desktop planetarium software.
The relative dearth of nearby galaxies in the Autumn sky compared to
the Spring sky is a result of our position in the Local Supercluster.

As for the comet orientations, I'm sure that if you used a large
enough sample of orbits, you'd find that their inclinations do not
have a preferred orientation.

Tom