August 7th M92 and the double double from an urban garden

[ikorodu]

The good run of cloudy evenings giving way to clear nights continued and so at around 9:45pm I was in my garden with the 8 inch dob. The moon was yet to rise and despite it not being truly dark I was able to pick out the brighter constellations with the naked eye.

My plan for the night was to seek out some globular clusters so that I could compare them with the only one that I had seen to date M13. I began the search for M92. Turn Left at Orion described it as being a great view but losing out on attention due to its spectacular neighbour, M13.

Having identified the very faint keystone of hercules I aimed my scope just to the right of halfway along an imaginary line from the star at the top left corner of the keystone to a very faint star above it. I use the tactic of shooting a 1mw green laser through the finder which gives a green beam up into the sky in the direction the finder is pointing. I have been very impressed by this systems ability to actually find things. I have a Telrad as well but it's still in its box having only being used once. I think that the lack of nakey eye stars lessens the usefulness of he Telrad.

Any way I digress, in the finder I could see a few faint stars but no cluster, I had a scan of the area and realigned with the laser and there it was in the finder. To the 32mm EP and a pleasing sight. Not as spectacular as M13 but a very grainy mushy cloud of light. As the sky darkened further and using averted vision I could start to resolve individual stars withing the cloud. I spent a good 10 minutes on this and was rewarded with increasing numbers of stars popping into views against the cloudy background.

M71 was my next target but I stopped off at the double boule near vega to try to split it. Using my seben zoom at 8mm it was clear that the two bright stars in the FOV were actually 4! I used a 2x Barlow to give an effective 4mm, this view was a bit mushy as the optics started to struggle but it clearly showed clear air between the stars.

My session was interrupted at this point by a call from work, it was clear that I'd need to attend so I quickly packed up. Those other cluster will have to wait for another night.

[Mike73]

Thats what I like about globs, the longer you observe them the more stars seem to 'pop' into the EP.

Dont give up with your Telrad though, maybe it would be a good idea to mount it aswell as your finder. The laser pen/finder approach will only work well until your laser pen gets cold and dims (which will eventually happen).

[rory]

agree with mike , id perservere with the telrad unless your skies are really light polluted. i stargaze from my home which is about a bortle7 . on poor nights it can be less of an aid but generally its a fantastic and simple bit of kit. loved the report by the way. i found m71 quite faint compared to m92.

[ikorodu]

I guess that having had such success with the laser i have been to lazy to get the Telrad out and attached to the scope.

Tonight is looking like it will be clear so maybe I'll try the Telrad again