Where, oh where, is M17?

[Mr. Subatomic]

Hey guys,

I was out last night looking at Sagittarius and Scorpius. I got a great look at M4, M6, M7, M22 and M8. Notice something missing there?

That's the thing, I could not find M17, no matter how long I looked and no matter how much I strained my neck. Is M17 much dimmer than M8?

I live in light-polluted skies, so does anyone know an effective way of finding M17, because it seems to be in a relatively small patch of empty sky. It would help if I could see nearby Scutum, but I can't.

If anyone could help me out, that would be great (trying to avoid arc minute and arc second talk, because it's still jargon to me at this stage).

Cheers.

[Rodstar]

Mr S,

The swan was certainly gracing the sky on Saturday night, when I took in her beautiful appearance at Kulnura.

I used to have a 10" SCT, which gives slightly less bright images than your 10" dob. With that aperture, I was easily able to distinguish the general shape of the Swan from suburban central coast NSW. You need dark skies with that aperture to see much in the way of detail within the nebulosity.

It is considerably fainter than the Lagoon, which is one of the brightest nebulous objects in the sky.

As for star hopping guide as to where to find it, I cannot assist, I have only ever located it with the assistance of technology (Meade Autosuite, and now Argo Navis).

[Mr. Subatomic]

Thanks Rod, that's cleared it up for me. :)

[Solanum]

I was looking at M17 the other night, with basically the same scope as you. It is a fair bit dimmer than M8, but not much different from the Triffid nebula and the black area in M17 makes detail in it clearer than the Triffid if anything.

I found it by locating the Ophicus/Serpens Cauda/Sagitarius/Scutum area, then looking for Oph nu-64 (which is the Ophicuhus star that basically crosses Serpens) and Sgr-Mu-13A (the one that sticks out from Sagitarius towards Oph-nu), look between those two with a low power wide angle eyepiece and you should see a fuzzy patch where M17 is. You can also see M16 (fainter - Eagle nebula) and M18 close by. If you've got reasonable star charts you can get closer by looking for the three stars in a line that go from M17 to M18 and past.

Hope that helps, I'm no expert in explaining these things!

[glenc]

Try looking down to the left of the bright star cloud M24 at this time of night.
You can see M17 with binoculars.