A Mira to Admire: R Oph

You would think that while camping out for 2.5 months I would have been able to get in at least a little bit of observing.  Ha.  It was mainly cold, rainy, and cloudy the whole time and the few times we had decent weather, I was plagued with either light pollution, mosquitoes, or both.  We finally came home after a marathon trip to Montana for a month and the northeast states, and two Canadian Provinces for a month and a half.  That was last night.  Tonight was one of those Missouri nights worth living for:  absolutely gorgeous.  Clear, cool, no moon, no bugs, just a vast array of stars and the spectacular Milky Way.  I was catching up on my S&T reading today and decided to try for R Ophiuchi, a Mira type variable star.  It was near its peak magnitude in June but tonight it was still visible in 7x50s.  I estimated it about 8.3.  It was nearly as bright as nearby HD 155107 at 8.2 but was still visible unlike HD 155047 at 8.6 mag.  It was nowhere as bright as the pair of mag 7.5 stars to the SE.  While I was observing, I noticed some smudges around a right triangle of stars south of Eta Oph and checked.  It was M9 and a couple of NGC globular clusters.  M9 was clearly visible as a non-stellar object and the two NGC clusters were there, just not as bright, and none were really very 'bright'. My old favorite Ptolemy's Cluster (M7) was visible unaided and gorgeous in 7x50s.  I was feeling lucky so I decided to try for Barnard's Star in Ophiuchus.  Just as I was getting familiar with the neighborhood, I felt a vibration on the deck and decided to investigate.  There was Mr (or Mrs) coon at the bird feeder eating some old cornbread that Judy had left out.  I watched it for awhile then decided to call it a night.  It's good to be back home again.