Jupiter, Neptune, M11 and M26

What a night! We went square dancing in Laurie, had ice cream afterwards, came home and watched Taken (GREAT MOVIE), then went outside to snag Jupiter and Neptune in the same FOV, and both Messiers in Scutum: M11 and M26. What a haul. M26 was easy to find but kind of ho hum. It makes a nice 45 degree right triangle with eps and del sct and is almost as nice in the 9x50 as it is in my 25mm ep. M11 is another matter though. I pushed the 8" up to 120x and M11 was like a box of diamonds on velvet. Dozens of pinpoints twinkling away. Jupiter was well up by 2:00 (about 30 degrees) and I was able to easily see two bands and three moons. Neptune was less than a degree away in the 25mm ep looking like a small blue dot. The night was perfectly clear and cool at 63F. At 85% humidity it was a bit damp though. All in all it was one of those nights that wanted me to stay up all night and soak it up.

M10 and M12

Tonight was another clear, warm, wet night and I decided to subject my 8" to a wet bath outside. I spent part of the day making a new mount for my new daisy red-dot sight and it worked well. It's a vast improvement over the old wiggly sight. My left eye is gradually clearing up and I could finally see with both eyes! How nice to be able to actually read my charts in dim light again. I decided to try for a couple of Messier objects in Ophiuchus that I've been missing: M10 and M12. They were both fairly large and easy to find. I'm surprised I haven't seen them before. M10 looked interesting with lots of stars to set off the glow of the globular cluster. There was even a hint of Lord Rose's dark lane. After admiring these two I turned to some recent snags: M107, M80, and M9. As soon as I remembered where M107 was, the rest was easy and they are all three much nicer in the 8". I next went after the Butterfly cluster in Scorpius and it was positively beautiful tonight. All in all, an excess of dew aside, it was not a bad night. The sky was very transparent, fairly steady, and quite dark as the moon had gone away for the night.

M107 in the dew

Another clear hot night so I tried for M107 in Ophiuchus. It was just coming into view in the east past Scorpius at 10:00 so I hauled out the 8" and went out into the hot humid night. M107 is pretty dim so I had to hunt around a bit. It hides out near Zet Oph but the area is dim enough that it's hard to find anything in the 9x50. I did finally get a new Daisy red dot sight and that helped a lot. I was at least able to find Zet Oph! After hunting a bit I found M107 lurking near a right triangle formed by SAO159975 and 2 companions. It was between the triangle and a pretty pair formed by SAO159958 and its companion. M107 is fairly large at about 3'x3' but dim at magnitude 8.1. The night was so dewey, I and all my stuff was wringing wet in about 20 minutes. Not a pleasant night for gazing.

M3 through a bubble

It's been awhile since my last post but it has also been rather cloudy and wet here in midMO, plus I managed to develop a detached retina about two weeks ago. That's all fixed but I still have a bubble left over from the patch job that is slowly going away. In the meantime it makes stargazing a challange! I've been sneaking a peak at the variable R Corona Borialis. It has been rather elusive even in binoculars but tonight I was able to see it fairly well in my 7x50's. I also decided to try for M3 in Serpens Caput. It was high in the south at 10:00 and fairly easy to spot in binoculars. I just followed the chain of mag 5 stars East from 109 Virgo to 5 Ser and M5 is just northwest. It showed up nicely in my 8" although it was a bit more difficult to find since my red dot finder fell off as I was lugging the beast outside. It's time to get a REAL red dot finder.