[DougAdams]

1st September 2007 – Deep Sky to the North
Seeing 2
Transparency 5
4" Refractor

A clear and cold night, with a slight breeze blowing. I set up with a view to looking at the moon and hunting craterlets in Plato. Moonrise was at 10:40pm so it wouldn't be viewable until around midnight. That gave me 2 hours to hunt down some stuff. I only took the 24mm Panoptic (22x) and 11mm Nagler (49x) out with me.

I set up around the back of the house which is a lot darker. It only gives me a narrow view from about 45 degrees up to the south around to the horizon to the north. Usually, the north is aglow with the lights of suburban Melbourne, but tonight I could see Vega low in the north barely flickering. I decided to go hunting deep sky to the north for a while – something I never do.

I broke out the Sky Pocket Atlas and had a look around Vega and began star hopping.

M57 Ring Nebula – this object is slightly south of Vega, near Sheliak. Although Sheliak is not naked eye from where I was, I found it easy enough with the 24mm Panoptic. A slight hop to the left and I had the Ring Nebula. I'd never seen this object, but heard it was easy with small scopes. It was easy, and only about 20º off the northern horizon. In the eyepiece, it appears to be an almost perfectly circular grey smudge of light. I went up to the 11mm Nagler, which vastly improved the view due to better contrast. The 24mm really brings a lot of sky glow, but the 11mm has a lot more contrast - the sky is darker. The nebula was very evident with direct vision and I fancy I could see the "hole" with averted vision. I have no doubt that from dark skies, or from a more northern latitude, this would be a great object. I sketched this view.

M56 – About half way between Sheliak and the double star Albireo is M56, a globular cluster in Lyra. I thought this would be a cinch to pick up, however I couldn’t find it. I gave it 15 minutes of re-checking the star atlas and re-pointing the scope. I couldn’t see it in the 24mm Panoptic – so I either was in the wrong spot or it’s very faint. I looked it up and see it’s magnitude 8.6 and 7 arc minutes in size – I should have seen it. One to try again sometime, perhaps from darker skies.

Albireo – I had never viewed this double star. I remember reading about it in the introduction to "Turn Left At Orion". Apparently it is a bright double, with markedly different colours. The star was easy to pick out in the northern sky, so I had a look. It is a lovely, easy double, easily split in both the 24mm and 11mm. The brighter of the pair is a golden amber colour, while the other is a white/blue star. I sketched the pair.

M71 - this is the controversial "is it a globular cluster or open cluster" object near Albireo, in Sagitta. I couldn't spot it at all in the 24mm Panoptic - the background light is too bright. When I was sure I had it in the FOV, even though I couldn't see it, I put in the 11mm Nagler. That's when I saw it - just a faint smudge of stars that is almost invisible. Barely worth looking at from light polluted skies.

M27 Dumbbell Nebula - working further southwards from M71, I easily found this in Vulpecula. It's a bright, hazy oblong patch of misty light immediately obvious in the eyepiece. I couldn't see the dumbbell shape, but could see that it had an elongated, almost rectangular, shape. I could not see any colour in the object. See sketch.

M62 - globular cluster near Antares. Easily found this, surprisingly bright, large cluster. This had a distinctive bright core and a fainter surrounding halo. Nice easy object to find. I sketched this object.

M19 - another globular cluster near Antares. M19 appears to be similar in both size and brightness to M62. However, M19 doesn’t have the distinctive core/halo features of M62. This globular was more a misty round patch of light. Still, a nice object, and easy to find. I sketched this object.

I had a quick look at Antares (my never ending quest to split it), M6 and M7. It was getting cold and the neighbours had turned on their outside floodlights - so kind of them - so I packed it up. The moon can wait for another night.