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Old 01-07-2005, 02:03 PM
dhumpie
Planetary neb & glob nut

dhumpie is offline
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 879
This is one of the best globulars for small telescopes and it definately better than the great northern globular M13 (best it both in size, brightness and resolution). It is easy to find as it is located just to the left of the top of the triangle that forms the lid of the teapot and it is bright. My bet is for it to be visible from semi dark observing locations as it is about magnitude 5. It is also very very easy to resolve as it is a class III globular (from memory). Even my 15x70's shows some of its numerous suns when tripod mounted. It is fully resolved above 100x in my old 76mm f/9 newt and my Orion 80ST. The views are nothing short of jawdropping in a 6" scope at similar powers. At low power I see spidery legs extending from its core (see my sketch). At 300x in the 6", it appears very similar to Omega Centauri in that it looks more like an open cluster than a globular as this globular does not contain a condensed core. To me, this is one of the globulars that has more character due to its spidery legs. The other one is the starfish cluster in Pavo (NGC 6752). O'Meara nicknamed this the crackerjack cluster. See my sketch at:

http://www.geocities.com/dhumpie/dastro/m22.jpg

Darren

Last edited by dhumpie; 01-07-2005 at 05:18 PM.
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