Summer Messiers

Date: 9/16/06

Time: 9:00PM - 12:00AM

Place: Earth 'n' Sky Farm, Calhoun, GA

Seeing: 4

Transparency: 7

Equipment: 12.5" F5.3 Dob on Tracking Mount

The transparency, darkness, and steadiness of the atmosphere was the best I've seen all summer. Toward the end of the session atmospheric turbulence seemed to increase for some reason but was not a problem.

We did the summer Messiers tour up the Milky Way starting in Sagittarius and moving north. We stayed mostly with the glob clusters and nebulae with some observing of nearby open clusters.

We started with two most famous summer Messiers M8 and M20, the Lagoon Nebula and Trifid Nebula. My new UHC filter made a noticeable difference, making the dust lanes in both more prominent. You can linger for some time in this area due to the number of fainter objects from the NGC catalog.

We then glanced at a couple of the open clusters in the area, namely M21and M23 before sliding over to view M28, a nice glob cluster just to the west of Kaus Borealis, the tip of the lid of the "teapot".

Moving northward we glanced at M18, M24 and M25 before zeroing in on the Swan or Omega nebula, M17. It was quite spectacular in the 12.5, getting oohs and ahhs from Kathy when it was her turn to view (me, too).

Just a short slide north and slightly west brought us to M16 after we took a quick glance at M18, an open cluster just below M17. M16 is a small open cluster with a faint nebula sometimes called the "Star Queen". In long exposure photos one can see the globules of new stars being formed.

After that we slid over into Ophiuchus and found M14, a nice bright globular cluster. Not far to the south and west we found M10, another glob cluster. Closeby we found M12, the third glob in Oph.

We changed directions after that and I slid the scope around to M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra that is so spectacular. I never tire of observing it.

By now M31 was above the big tree in the front pasture where we set up and was even just visible to the naked eye against the Calhoun sky glow. It was nice and bright in my 26mm eyepiece and I could get M32 in the same field. After a bit of searching I finally spied M31's faint companion galaxy, M110. That's the first time I had observed it.

Next I slid around to Cassieopiea and found the double cluster NGC884 & NGC869 which is a lovely view in a low power, wide field eyepiece.

To finish the evening, I lined the scope up on M13 in Hercules which one could just make out naked eye and was easily visible in binocs. In the scope at my lowest power (26mm or about 63x currently) it's quite spectacular. I liken it to a pile of tiny diamonds on black velvet.

Curt Diggs
09/18/06