desperate to get out again i grabbed my scope at about 7 and set it outside for 15-20mins to cool. Tonight I was to hunt something i hadn't seen before...
time: 7:30 - 8:30 (had to get back in for lost...)
seeing: reasonable tho not great. 4/10
constellation: serpens
object: messier 5, mag 5.6
EP used: 15mm GSO SV
I grabbed my trusty chart and looked for the constellation serpens. my charts are american so I turned them up-side-down. serpen is just to the east (or right i guess) of virgo and is fiarly faint in my backyard. I had real trouble finding it, having never looked for it before. the constellation turned out to be of dimmer stars than i though and after about 20min i had it mapped out in the sky.
finding m5 from there should have been easier but i struggled for some reason. eventually i had myself looking for a triangle of brightish stars and POP! just outside the group was m5. its a nice looking glob of fairly bright stars that look failry loose in my scope (similar in size and brightness to m22 i think) but it suffered as i get sky glow in that direction.
I noticed in mt chart that not far away was something called ngc 5846. star hopping towards virgo I found it easy enough due to the stars surrounding it. It turned out to be a faint 10.2 mag galaxy. not much detail shows in my scope, its just a blob that brightens with averted vision. still a pleasing find...
the back door opens...
"David, you coming in? lost is about to start!"
"on my way" I reply
