Monday, June 22, 2009

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.

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