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A quick sketch from the 1st September (sorry - date is wrong on the image). M15 was still fairly low in the east but the central condensation of stars really stood out, even in a 5.5inch scope. The bright field star intruding on the edge of the image was distracting. If I had a tracking mount I'd have banished it permanently! A lot of the extended GC was on the threshold of vision and the resolved stars faded in and out. M15 will always have a special place for me as it was the first GC i ever saw Thanks for looking. Jack

After many weeks of telescopes gathering dust I finally managed a long night sketching under the stars. Having only ever sketched open clusters I wanted to attempt a GC. Hercules was well positioned so I chose to draw m92, often overshadowed by the more famous m13. My red torch was a little too bright and there was some intermittent cloud but the sketch comes pretty close to what I saw. All comments / criticisms / comparisons most welcome! Jack p.s. As I was packing up around midnight I saw what I can only assume were parts of a meteorite breaking up in the sky. A long trail of five to ten separate glowing dots moved eastward through cygnus toward the horison. It was like watching several satellites following each other in an absolutely straight line. Anyone else see this or remember something similar?

One of the largest and brightest globular clusters, M3 is about 33,900 light-years away from Earth and contains around 500,000 stars. 26 x 30 second exposures at 6400 ISO plus 10 dark frames and eight flat frames. Processed in Deep Sky Stacker and Photoshop CS6.

Hi Guys, I present you the second image taken with my Moravian G4-16000 camera mounted on my modified TeleVue NP101is. Images and technical information below. M13 globular cluster and its galactic area : Full Resolution image 4k x 4k here : www.poigetdigitalpics.com/G4-16000/M13.htm Full Resolution image here : http://www.poigetdigitalpics.com/Fichiers_Divers/M13new_image_Annotated.jpg Enjoy ? Florent

The bright, almost fully illuminated moon doesn't interfere as drastically with bright objects like globular clusters as with fainter, less condensed targets. This is an RGB image of M3 - I never bother to make L exposures with globulars these days, the signal is generally strong enough in the colour channels not to need it. Minimal processing - just stretching and a little sharpening in PI. 12" TS/GSO RC at F/8 on a Mesu 200. Atik 383l+, AtikEFW2, ATIK OAG, Lodestar X2, Baader 36mm filters R=G=B = 5 x600s binned 2x2. Click on the image and then select "Full Size" if you want more detail :-) Comments welcome Derrick

Omega Centauri (NGC 5139) is a globular cluster in the constellation of Centaurus. This photo was imaged as a side project using my 8SE on the CGEM and the modded Canon 40D at 2032mm focal length. The total exposure was 97 minutes, 17x60sec, 12x150s and 10x300sec subs at ISO800. Clear Skies,

This was taken over 4 nights between the 24th September and 6th October as I have a small windows to view objects in the south due to houses and a great big tree getting in the way. Messier 2, also known as NGC7089 is a globular cluster in the constellation of Aquarius. It is one of the largest know globular clusters and was discovered in 1746 by Giovanni Domenico Maraldi. It lies approximately 55000 ly away and is around 174 ly across.

Hi, I was asked on a Swedish forum to put an "Astronomical Dictionary" on my homepage. I have made a test page in an easy form. Astronomical related words linked to wikipedia. It aims to the beginners in astronomy so it should not be too complicated words. http://astrofriend.eu/astronomy/astronomical-dictionary/astronomical-dictionary.html Let me know if it's useful and and I shall add more words. /Lars

This is a three hour RGB image taken last week with a straight out of the box skywatcher Pds 8" newtonian and an Atik 314L mono camera and baader filters. I seem to be getting some kind of internal reflection around the mirror clips? any thoughts suggestions welcome Thanks for looking!

  Observing Information DSO - M13,M52 Date - 15/08/16 Time - 00:30-01:30 Lunar Phase - Waning Gibbious 79% Luminosity Seeing - Excellent Equipment - Celestron Nexstar 6SE, No filters used Eyepieces - Pentax SMC 8-24 Zoom Eyepiece. M13-17.5mm, M52-24mm. Additional info - What a beautiful night of observing, I purposely chose 2 targets furthest away from the moon and found they offered some really good detail especially M13. The longer I observed the more stars and structure it yielded, I honestly could have spent another hour adding to it but felt with the moon being so bright I wasn't going to get much more. M52 was another object enough away from the moon to show some lovely detail and I was impressed with how many stars I could observe and how many levels of brightness and detail in the stars I could discern, it really was a challenge but I loved every minute ? I hope you enjoyed viewing my sketches as much as I enjoyed sketching them Clear skies ???? Richard

Finally had the right mix of work trips, dark skies, and time to get out and spend some time under the stars. My 'normal spot' was cloud covered with a second day of thick 'monsoon' moisture pushing into the US SouthWest and hanging out over the mountains. I tried out a new stargazing location 10 minutes from my hotel...it provided good skies to the east and south...north was washed out from local businesses and west had sky glow for quite a while. That said...the Milky Way was beautiful and nearly stretched from horizon to horizon (sky glow to the north stopped it in that direction). Lagoon Nebula/Butterfly Cluster were obvious and M31 was just visible (averted) once it was high enough. So overall conditions were pretty decent. Location: Tehachapi, CA, USA Elevation: ~4300' MSL Time: 21:00-00:30 Observing was done primarily with my 10mm EP for 120x but for some targets i also used the 26mm EP for 46x. UHC filter was used for nebula. I went out with SkyTools3 and sorted my Hershell 400 list to show only objects in SCO and SGR. Here's the list of objects observed from that quick sorting: NGC6451 (Tom Thumb Cluster) - OC - shape looked roughly like a heart NGC6544 - GC - a tight, dusty snowball NGC6520 - OC - looked like a thumb...dark vein in MW surrounding NGC6624 - GC - compact cluster...nearly solid core with dusty 'corona' NGC6553 - GC - faint...somewhat trapizoidal shaped...no detail NGC6569 - GC - even, dirty textured snow ball NGC6645 - OC - nothing memorable...a grouping of stars in the MW...easy find NGC6568 - OC - another bunch of stars a little closer than others...nothing memorable NGC6818 (Little Gem) - PN - a fuzzy star a bit bigger than the rest - perhaps a slight blue hue? NGC6583 - OC - a faint little OC that stood out enough to make me figure out what it was...shaped like a fuzzy triangle NGC6540 - GC - a ghost of a GC...very faint...averted best NGC6558 - GC - small, faint GC NGC6547 - OC - hard to pin down...non-descript but the field was right Then moving over to the Messier List I observed M25 - OC - easy target M55 - GC - not an easy star hop but a nice cluster once there...100+ stars visible M75 - GC - tight GC with a bright core which quickly diffuses to about 3x the core width...a fuzz ball M15 - GC - WOW! Nice GC...bright with lots of tendrils running away from the core M30 - GC - a right GC that looked like it had 2-3 legs coming off it...more like and oC than a GC M72 - GC - dirty snowball...not bright M73 - OC - difficult star hop for me... to see...4 stars(?)...blah. Then I finished the night with two new friends and two old ones: NGC7000 (North American Nebula) - Diff Neb - UHC filter - saw the Gulf of Mexico area pretty easily...haze only in the rest of 'North America' Will have to revisit under darker skies. IC5070 (Pelican Nebula) - Diff Neb - UHC Filter - could just see the largest/brigtest section with averted vision...and just barely. Will have to revisit under darker skies M31 (Andromeda Galaxy) - GX - beautiful first view in months M110 - GX - Andromeda's little partner...pretty M33 (Pinwheel Galaxy) - just searched for it for the fun of it...just faintly visible with no detail. Need darker skies. A very good night by all standards. 22 new finds, a few old friends and I finished the Messier List!!! Yeah! Happy Hunting!

We had a moonless, clear night here in Sweden on 2016-05-04. Unlikely as it is, the sky was also very transparent and with unusually good seeing, and with temperatures above zero! I promptly forgot how tired I was after work and set out to observe and image. Started with M5, lying low. Nikon D40X, DSLR with Baader MKIII comma corrector, at the primary focus of a 200 mm f/5 Skywatcher 200 PDS newtonian, mounted on a EQ5 dual axis mount. Light pollution won't allow me to take long exposures that low in the sky (images taken at higher altitude on the same night came out much better), so for starters I shot just 10 scenes at ISO800, 6 seconds long each. Pre-processed in UFRaw, GIMP, stacked in Registax, and final touches in GIMP. Here it is, I am still learning, so no jaw-dropping pictures yet! Cheers! Hernán (Cinco Sauces) (This story is also posted in my astroblog: https://epistulaeastronomicae.wordpress.com/)

Hi, Tried to image my favourite globular cluster. Turned out not too bad! Only took umpteen tries to get the colour right, or should I say close. I remember seeing this through my mate's 14 dob at a dark site once, could not stop saying "oh wow", looks so much better than in my 8" LX90. http://www.pbase.com/grahammeyer/image/167207230 Details under image and you can use the size buttons at the bottom also. Thanks for looking.

This is a series of 10 minute and 60 second LRGB subs from the Deep Sky West facility in New Mexico. Processing was done mostly in PI, but PS was used for final tweaking. You may need to click the full size image to see the 'propeller'. Luminance: 35x60" bin 1x1 Luminance: 11x600" bin 1x1 Red: 12x60" bin 1x1 Red: 20x600" bin 1x1 Green: 12x60" bin 1x1 Green: 20x600" bin 1x1 Blue: 12x60" bin 1x1 Blue: 20x600" bin 1x1 Which I think makes exactly 13 hours. Tak FSQ 106; Paramount MyT; QSI 683; Astrodon Filters

Observation 25-26 July 2017 Date: 25-26th July 2017 @ 19:50 – 2:30AEST Location: Backyard Equipment: 14” Skywatcher GOTO Dobsonian, Televue 31mm Nagler T5 , Televue 17mm Ethos, Televue 11mm Nagler T6, Televue 2X Powermate, Baader Neodymium, Baader Contrast Booster, Astronomik UHC filter. The first thing I noticed from the beginning is that there was more sky glow than I would like, it was quite obvious that the seeing won't be perfect. I keep hunting for maximum magnification and detail on planets so before observation I re-collimated the Dobsonian from scratch. This time I put a white piece of paper behind the secondary so it was easier to see if the secondary mirror is circular and centered. Second step was to use the laser to collimate but noticed that when I touched or span the laser, its reflection changed, so using it is pointless without first collimating the collimator (what da?) and proceeded to use the Cheshire. As a final step I tweaked the collimation on Saturn and a nearby star. Saturn: Saturn looked soft and fuzzy. The Cassini division was barely hinting itself in and out of a shade like apparition on the outer edges of the rings. There were 5 soft moons around it, but I knew that the seeing was too poor to properly test the collimation tonight. After a disappointing start tonight when comparing to my hope and expectation, while observing Saturn at 150X, at 20:40 (iPhone time, 20:38 "Star Walk" time) a bright satellite flew past and through Saturn. The flyby was not slow but wasn't as fast as a shooting star either. When checking for satellites on the "Star Walk" app, it turned out to be "Envisat". It is rare views like this that make a view memorable and special, by adding a bit of action to the scene. After seeing that Saturn looked quite soft and with the considerable amount of sky glow, I wasn't expecting to get the best views so I took the lazy approach to observing tonight and, after accurately star aligning the scope, selected the objects above 40 degrees in order from the "Deep-Sky Tour" option on the SW14 hand controller. Lagoon Nebula (M8): M8 was visible the same as I saw it last time I was observing and as before the sky glow killed all of the fine detail that I saw back in May. Again the main part of the nebula was visible, the dark lane was there, with a hint of structure with in it, as well as the faint nebulosity around the main “Lagoon” coming into view at 50X and 100X power. During dark nights, there is a lot more visible, especially detail wise within and around the nebula, but unfortunately tonight, that was washed away. As with most nebulae, the best way to view this nebula is by using the UHC filter. Omega Nebula (M17): At 50X and 100X the “Swan” is easily visible, along with some of the outer nebulae coming into view faintly around the “Swan”, particularly behind it. Higher magnification, 200X, the structure and shading was once again very easily visible within the Swan head and body. The use of the UHC filter is a must on this nebula to see all of the details. Still a lot of detail is visible for such a bright sky glow seeing condition. Eagle Nebula (M16): The "E" shape was quite easily visible, not as obvious as during a darker night but still visible among the stars in and around the nebula. I’m very sure that at 200X magnification and using the UHC filter, I saw the “dark pillar”, the middle one out of the “Pillars of creation”, the one with “squiggle” at the bottom of it in the photographs. At 100X there was a quite obvious dark shading where the dark pillar is situated. At first I thought it might be wishful thinking and talking myself into believing that I’m seeing hints of one of the pillars, as the seeing and transparency conditions are not the best, but the more I looked in the area, the more I was seeing a distinct elongated darkening at the correct spot, just under the two brighter stars within the nebula. Pavo Globular Cluster: The Pavo Globular is a very nice looking Globular cluster. At 200X it looked like a typical globular except that it has, what looks like, more brighter individual stars sprinkled at the foreground with the Globular shimmering behind it, a few scattered stars at the edges and one particularly bright star toward edge at the top left. This Globular is not as big as 47Tuc or the Omega Cluster but at higher power, it looks just as nice and interesting. This Globular is definitely in my top 3 Globular Clusters to view to date and I will make the effort to image it hopefully in the not too distant future. Butterfly Cluster: An open star cluster with a bright orange star within that drew attention to itself. At 50-100X magnification it sits nicely within the FOV of both the 31mm Nagler and 17mm Ethos. The Butterfly Cluster is a medium sized open star cluster and with the orange star glowing within it reminds me of two other objects, it sort of resembles the cluster within the center of the Rosette nebula with a touch of the orange jewel from the Jewel Box cluster in Crux. Trifid Nebula (M20): The nebula was surprisingly easy to see tonight considering the glow, but the dark lanes are easily visible, within the easy to see with direct vision, “Trifid”, the double star in the center is easily split and the blue nebula haze is quite easily visible to the right of the “Trifid”. The best way to see M20 was at 100X and 200X magnification and using the UHC filter, although the wide angle view with the 31mm Nagler did give a nice contrasty view of the nebula floating in space, with the wide angle, it was like looking out of a space craft port hole. Comparing the view of the Trifid Nebula to how I saw it from a dark location through the 8", it looked about the same, so not bad for seeing the same view but from a much brighter and worse seeing condition sky. Globular (M4): M4 is quite a small Globular cluster in Scorpius near Antares on the eastern side. This globular needed 200X magnification to resolve its core into granulated stars. Globular (M5): Another Globular Cluster picked from the SW14 deep sky tour hand controller. This Globular is quite bright and looks quite nice in the eyepiece, definitely a considerable amount brighter than, for example, M4 and M80. This Globular looks tightly packed at the core, where the granulation is visible at 100X very easily, and less dense sprinkling of stars at the edges. This Globular Cluster is a worthwhile object to observe during a night of observation. Wild Duck Cluster: This cluster is something different, heaps of stars quite tightly packed, looking almost like fireflies rather than wild ducks. There was the shimmer visible through it which gave it a “being alive effect", it is a good sight at 50X and 100X magnifications. As most objects, this one would really benefit from a dark transparent sky to have the "fireflies" as sharp pin points of light since tonight it sort of looked soft focused. Globular (M2): Another small globular needing 200X to resolve stars at the core, this one seemed tightly packed. I just had a quick look and moved on. Maybe I should have studied it a bit longer but initially it resembled M4 and other small globulars. Globular (M22): M22 is a bright Globular Cluster in Sagittarius. The Sagittarius and Scorpio constellations have, by the look of it, a lot of different types of Globular Clusters. M22 is almost as impressive as the Pavo Globular cluster, it is almost as bright and big as the one in Pavo which places it in close position four of my favorite globulars to date. At 100X I saw a dense core with less dense randomly sprinkled brighter stars at the outer edges. Definitely worth a visit. Globular (M28): M28 is another smallish Globular, not too dim, and a bit bigger than and not as faint as M4. This Globular looks good at 200X. Southern Pinwheel Galaxy (M83): Tonight the view of the galaxy was disappointing at best, all that was visible tonight was the glow of the core, no spiral arms were visible at all at any magnification, 50X-200X. Not even the “S” shape coming through, simply the sky was not transparent enough and I guess it didn't help for it to be getting quite low toward the west. Saturn Nebula: As the last time I looked at this planetary Nebula, it was a fuzzy greenish oval, looking almost as if it's always out of focus, only knowing I was focused by the stars near it. 300X needed to see a decent size, but still looking like a featureless oval that is poorly focused, UHC filter didn't help either. Looking at the Hubble image is obvious why it is looking out of focus. It is a planetary nebula within a fainter more diffuse nebula with a bar structure flowing through it, so at a lower resolution, fainter monochromatic view, the more diffuse nebula flows into the central nebula resulting with a fuzz oval view. Helix Nebula: The "Eye of God" initially looked like a smokey oval which was quite hard to see with no central star and initially only showed dimmer fuzzy center. I stopped observing at about 23:00 because I wanted to see the Helix Nebula higher up in the sky so I decided to comeback to the Helix later. I left the scope tracking on the Helix Nebula for almost 2 hours, and returning at 01:30 when it was much higher in the sky, I was pleasantly surprised that it was still in the FOV... not center any more but still in the 100X magnified Ethos eyepiece FOV. Using the UHC filter the smokey ring was much easier to see than before, when it was lower in the eastern horizon. The smoke ring was defined with a dimmer center, the top and bottom parts of the ring were noticeably brighter with the central neutron star visible when using averted vision. Some of the main stars that I remember in the image I took a while ago were also visible there around the smoke ring. The view in the 8" did not reveal as much detail even though I tried to observe it in a darker sky condition. Not bad for what I saw during a milky bright sky. I was under the impression that there was little or no difference between the 14" and the 8", but after seeing the difference in the Helix Nebula, perhaps I was wrong, and just have the wrong idea of what 3X light gathering power really means. I wonder how it will look under a dark, crystal clear sky. The view without the UHC filter made the central neutron star just barely visible with direct vision, along with the stars around the nebula but the nebula was a lot less obvious, still hinted at some nebulosity, but the structure was not discernible. Under a darker sky I'm sure the view will be staggering. M80: Much like M4 except a little bit fainter. M80 is near Antares on the other, western side. This Globular Cluster needed 200X to resolve the sprinkling of stars that seem to be more sparse at the edges. M9: This is a small and faint Globular cluster that needed to be magnified 200X to see any granulation through it but it is still small when comparing to The Pavo Globular Cluster, M22 or even M4 or M80. 300X was needed to see it at a decent scale where it was still a fair bit fainter than the other globs I observed tonight but at this power it had quite obvious star separation visible in the form of granulation all the way into the core. Neptune: At 150X Neptune was a tiny, pale blue disc not much bigger than the bright stars near it. There is no hope to see any detail in the atmosphere of Neptune so any more magnification is pointless, plus the atmospheric conditions wouldn't allow for it anyway, but it was a tighter point of light than last time I targeted it. It also was a lot higher in the sky. Seeing was quite poor tonight coupled with a lot of obvious sky glow visible to a level where the sky looked milky when dark adapted, resulting in loss of contrast and transparency causing fuzzy views and lack of details. The poor transparency was particularly visible on the brighter nebulae such as M8. The poor seeing also made it impossible to tell whether tonights careful collimation helped the ability to get crisp detail at above 400X magnification. As night went on, the condition improved slightly but still nowhere near the best seeing conditions which I experienced in May. The slight improvement in seeing conditions, along with being higher in the sky, might have been the reason for the increased details and features that I saw on the Helix Nebula after coming back to it 2 hours later. Looking at the objects I bagged tonight, most of the them, by far, were Globular Clusters so I guess tonight was a "night of the Globular". After not expecting too much due to the seeing and taking the lazy Deep-Sky Tour option tonight, I did get a few nice surprises, namely the Helix Nebula, a possible pillar of creation in the eagle and a few nice and bright Globular Clusters, few of which I saw for the first time. I noticed Pegasus/Andromeda at 02:30 as I was packing up and so I tried to find M31 with the binoculars but it was too low in the north, in the direction of many street lights that washed any hint of it away... I guess I'm situated to far south. If you read this novel of ramblings of a astro-nut to the end, thank you and congratulations. Clear skies.

I am a newbie and would appreciate some advice on viewing globular clusters. . I view from Wisconsin, USA which is at 43 degrees latitude. I am using an Orion 6in f/5 (FC750) Newtonian reflector telescope mounted on a SkyWatcher AZ4 mount. I have upgraded the 25mm and 10mm Plossl eyepieces that came with the telescope with TeleVue 18.2 Delite and TeleVue Nagler 5 eyepieces. I have had good views this summer of Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and the Moon and now want to move on to globular clusters Since I currently have a good view of Scorpius, I have been trying to visualize globular cluster M4 using Antares as my initial target. Antares currently sits at 28’ 51’’ so am looking through quite a bit of atmosphere. Using Stellarium as my guide in walking from Antares, I am able to see, what I think is, the vague, hazy and very dim outline of M4 - not any way near the brightness shown me by Stellarium using the ocular view feature with the parameters of my telescope and eyepiece (normally the 18.2 Delite) plugged in. So my questions (thanks for your patience in reading thus far): Do you have any suggestions of how I might enhance the brightness and resolution of the stars in M4. Is there simply too much atmosphere for me to look through to expect a better view? Is there a filter that might be helpful? I am normally viewing within 6o minutes of sunset when I see a sky full of stars. Do I need to wait an hr or two, for more complete darkness? Other suggestions? Are my expectations too great under my viewing conditions? Is there more a accessable cluster for me to cut my teeth on? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

M3 From the other night, naff conditions, so I was surprised it came out this way. Very short exposures, but being so bright I could get away with it. Equipment used was a skywatcher MN190, an Atik 314L plus mono. Plenty of exposures though at 40 x 10 seconds.