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Hi Dana,
Thanks for all that background information. Fascinating! Both the scientific and observational detail. Your point about the small groups of field stars explains what was troubling me about how the cluster appeared at the EP.
I must confess that globulars are a bit of a passion of mine. I think the notion that they are all the same overlooks fascinating subtle visual differences (and of course a wealth of differences in terms of metallicity, composition, age, and all the rest).
I have quite a limited field of view of the sky from my balcony where I do a lot of observing. I can see the Eastern horizon from N to S, up to about 70 degrees altitude; and a small patch about 40 degrees diameter directly at zenith. The upshot is I have to plan my observing very carefully, around a quite small area of sky (but I get almost all of it over the course of a year).
I found 6717 because I would have done a search in SkyTools for globulars within 20 degrees of Nunki (or similar) that night, and chased the ones that looked interesting.
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