First night in quite some time that there has been a gap in the clouds. It has been very frustrating with some clear starts to evenings - get the scope out and cooled and the clouds come over as soon as I'm ready to observe. But I did get a brief look in this night.
22/6/12
Telescope 400mm f4.9 tri-dob reflector Eyepieces 28mm UWAN, 17,13,9 mm Naglers, Paracorr
Navigation: Uranometria, Night Sky Observers Guide,
Seeing fair, transparency variable from poor to fair.
Messier 5 GC in Serpens Caput
175x Stunning bright GC with myriad resolved stars and a strong 4 coreand 7 dense halo of many stars around this and spilling out to cover at least 20. Several trails of stars the most notable being one to the S curving to the E
NGC 5921 GX in Serpens Caput
250X 4 long N-S bar with obvious nucleus in 2 wide soft haze. This galaxy at the end of a curved line of 3 stars. The poor transparency precludes seeing spiral arms.
Haze in the northern sky necessitates heading for the southern sky.
NGC 6397 GC in Ara
175x Bright GC obvious in finderscope. Set in very rich star field. Fills much of the 28 FOV, many resolved stars and bright 7 core. Several trails of bright stars curve out from the core looking a bit like spiral arms. Numerous little pairs and trios of stars abound.
NGC 6208 OC in Ara
135x 20 long N-S enrichment of stars in an incredibly rich field. The field makes it hard to find the edges of the cluster, but it looks like a zig-zag about 5 wide with stars of roughly similar magnitude and colour.
NGC 6152 OC in Ara
90x Large 40x30 splash of >100 stars in very rich star field. Cluster members are varied in magnitude and colour and there are many loops and patterns of stars.
Hi Patrick. Nice little report with excellent descriptions, as always. The notes on 6208 remind me of some of the clusters in Puppis, same problem - where is the edge? Victoria has been copping some rotten weather of late, it just needs to settle down to a cool dry weather pattern. Cheers, Paul.