August Challenge Object - M55

[atalas]

I would love to live in skies that that again ! where I am I'm stuck in mag 4 If im lucky nights . Very depressing I tell you ,even makes imaging difficult John.

Louie

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

Originally Posted by atalas

Narayan , there's a rumour going around that your loosing your avi's !

I wouldn't have a bar of It ! yes I know this isn't a joke thread !

Louie

[dhumpie]

Looks grainy in my 15x70's tripod mounted. I think I can make out some specks in it!

Darren

[RapidEye]

I finally got a break from our normally horrid summer skies and took advantage of it by hauling my 10" Dob out into the backyard!

LM 6.0+ St 4/5
09:20 EDT 10mm Pentax XW - 120X

This is verbatum, right out of my notebook:
A dandy of a glob! It looks in the 10" the way M22 does in the 4.5". Very easy to see in the binox tonight - helps make it easy to find.
Very large and open/loose. Hazy, almost unresolvable center. With averted vision - the center explodes into stars!
Need to revist with 4.5" to see how good it is there - on a good night.

note - I've previously logged it in my 4.5" about a month ago, but under pretty poor skies. It was the last Messier I needed to complete all 110 - so even if the weather sucked, I was still going to log it that night!

[atalas]

Thanks for the report RapidEye ! always interesting to read other peoples reports and congrats on logging all Messier objects ! hope your skies get better so we can hear more about your Northern perspective.

Louie

[asimov (John)]

Good reporting Rapid. & well done on logging all the messiers!

[RapidEye]

Originally Posted by atalas

Thanks for the report RapidEye ! always interesting to read other peoples reports and congrats on logging all Messier objects ! hope your skies get better so we can hear more about your Northern perspective.

Louie

Yeah, the summers here in the SE US are horrid! Hot, muggy, sticky, and bugs out the wazoo! Fall is really the nicest time around here, with October and November usually being really great.

I've got a star party scheduled for next weekend, in the SW mountains of Virginia. Its a couple of thousand feet elevation, so it will certainly be cooler than here, and so far <FINGERS crossed>the weather forcast is good!

Originally Posted by asimov

Good reporting Rapid. & well done on logging all the messiers!

Thanks! It took me a couple of days longer than a year to do it, from when I first got my scope and started to learn to starhop. Once I began hunting for Messiers in earnest, it was about an 8 month effort. I could have finished a month earlier, but the friggen weather wouldn't cooperate!

Anyway, what is the most interesting part is that I did it all with just a 4.5" F8 newt! Lemme tell ya - some of those spring galaxies were pretty tough, but after a couple of hard nights of working through the V-C Galaxy cluster, I new it was all downhill from there

If anyone is intersted, here is where I posted the highlights:
http://www.rapideye.us/astro/woohoo.htm

I've got to put a couple of updates on there - like nabbing Mars a couple of weeks ago - thus completing my efforts at all 9 planets too (8 with the 4.5" and Pluto with my 10")! #3 was the easiest - just looked at some trees down at the end of the pasture

[dhumpie]

Great report Rapid. How high does it get in the states????

Darren

[RapidEye]

Originally Posted by dhumpie

How high does it get in the states????

Temperature? Humidity? Eleveation?

In the SW US, California, Arizona, Nevada, it can get over 120F (almost 50C). Its comparable to central Oz - very hot, dusty, and dry.

In the SE US, Anywhere along the southern Atlantic coast and all of the Gulf of Mexico, it regularly gets over 100F (about 40C) but the humidity is usually over 90 percent!!! Horrid. Probably comparable to Cairns.

As far as observing is concerned, in the SE US...
You can't have that much heat and humidity in the air and have it stay stable. Its a boiling churning mess of haze most of the time and we get thunderstorms most afternoons. You can litterally see the murk hanging in the air.

Elevation wise, the highest peak in the Eastern US is here in North Carolina and it is only 6,684ft (2000 meters). Not very high. But out west, in the Sierra and Rocky Mountains, there are quite a few peaks over 14,000 feet (4300 meters). I lived most of my life in Colorado anywhere between 5000 and 7000 feet. Some of the places where I used to race mountain bikes were around 10,000 feet elevation

[dhumpie]

Sorry Rapid I should have been more specific. I wanted to know how high the glob gets over there in North Carolina. Over here the glob is at zenith at this time of the year. But your last post was very educational as well

Darren

[RapidEye]

Originally Posted by dhumpie

I wanted to know how high the glob gets over there in North Carolina.

Heh - I cast my net as wide as I thought I needed too - clearly not wide enough

At my place in central NC it gets about 24 degrees above the horizon. From someplace high and dry, like New Mexico, that would probably be OK. From here, most of the time, thats down in the murk.

Its not often that I get summer nights like I had last week where things look that great, that low. Even NGC 6231 look amazing. Easily the prettiest single OC in the sky that I've seen.

M13 is our summertime globular jewel. It passes through the zenith every night, all summer long. Lyra and Cygnus are the other nice summer ones. I suppose that is why M57 and the Veil Nebula are so often photographed by amatures around here.

I logged my first observation of the Veil complex a month or so ago and it floored me. Easily one of the most amazing sites in the heavens.