More gems in Sagitarius

Another clear night in midMO and this time I was able to get started shortly after dark. Before it got too hazy around 10:30 I was able to snag M20, M21, M24, M25, M55, and M75. Most were pretty easy to find. Three passing satellites were an interesting sideshow to the main event. One that passed by a globular cluster looked as if one of the cluster's stars came to life and crawled away. M75 was the hardest and also the smallest and dimmest. At a distance of about 67,500 light years, M75 is one of the more remote Messier objects and lies well beyond the galactic center. I found it by tracing a line from eps Sgr through Zet Sgr and about twice the distance between the two. Look for a group of four stars that looks like the four corners of a rectangle except that one of the corners fell out. The remaining diagonal points toward M75 in one direction and M55 in the other. Both are nice globulars but M55 is brighter. It was dim but nice in my 10mm ep and I was able to make out a dozen or more tiny component stars in the cluster. M8, the Lagoon Nebula, was also pretty with a cool dark lane through it. I was able to see it fairly well in my 7x50 binocs.
Jupiter and its four moons and twin bands rounded out the night which was finally capped off with a view of Neptune nearby and to the east. Neptune was quite dim at about mag 8 and a close companion to slightly dimmer SAO164675 which followed behind as they rapidly moved through my FOV. Calisto and Ganymede were on one side of Jupiter while Io and Europa were on the other.
The night started out with good seeing. I was able to make out all nine of the brighter stars of Sagitarius unaided and was even able to see the four stars making up the 'teaspoon' although I would call it a hocky stick. But what's a hocky stick got to do with a teapot?

After a long dry spell

It's been a long dry spell, or rather, a long moonlit, cloudy spell. It's been either cloudy, moonlit, or traveling it seems forever. We got back home after a square dance last night about 11:00 and it was clear so I just HAD to try for a few of the gems in Sagitarius. Sgr was already starting to disappear behind a tree but I was able to snag M54, M69, and M70 before the moon got up to high and spoiled things again. At least it was dry, cool, and only a very slight breeze. Very nice night all in all. It must have been a bit hazy as only the brighter stars of Sgr were visible unaided. All three globular clusters were fine subjects in my 8" dob with 25mm ep though, and fairly easy to find.

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.

Three more Coma galaxies

It is still clear with no moon tonight but there were some clouds earlier, it was dewy tonight, and rain is predicted for Saturday so I decided to make another night of it and see what I could do in the Virgo area with my 8". After fiddling around a bit, I went after M98, 99, and 100 in Coma by hopping along a line between Denebola and Eps Vir. About a field width of my 9x50 past Denebola I noticed a 5 star asterism that reminded me of the head of Scorpius. This makes a nice anchor for these three galaxies as all three are near one of the 5 stars: the two ends of the 'head' and the middle of the 'tail". M99 was the best of the three, being a largish blob near SAO100039. M98 is an elongated dim patch near 6 Com.
I finally gave up trying to read my paper charts and set up my laptop outside. That made it much easier to verify star fields but I still wasn't able to find any other objects. This is a rich area but I'll need to be better prepared to be able to find them with my dob. I doubt that they are bright enough to do well with the ETX-70 either.