Short session - Messier hit and a Messier miss.

[Moonshane]

The light nights and thin wispy high cloud are playing havoc with observing and creating clear but frustrating skies!

After some earlier solar observing, I managed an hour or so last night looking at some old favourites, Saturn, M13, Delta cygni, Epsilon lyrae, Epsilon bootis and the like and then as it finally got reasonably dark at about midnight, I decided to have a look at the Wild Duck Cluster M11. This is a really lovely object but again the sky quality reduced the impact a little even with my 12" dob.

Looking at the map I was using, I realised that new object, Messier 26 (a small open cluster in Scutum) was probably doable. I found it relatively quickly at 53x and was initially a little disappointed as it was a rather sparse cluster of just a few stars. Increasing the magnification at about 100x or more the cluster improved greatly with many more stars visible with averted vision.

Feeling I'd push my luck I then set my sights on M16, the Eagle Nebula, another object, in Serpens, never seen before as it's more often than not hiding behind houses or trees from home. Amazingly it was just in the right position. I star-hopped from M11 and found the open cluster easily. It is very nice in it's own right but try as I might I got only what can be described as tenuous glimpses of any nebulousity even with UHC and Oiii filters. I think my skies let me down here and I'll track this down from a better site in the future so not counted it yet. Looking at some of the skteches of this with less aperture it appears to be an object where you need either a bit of height or much better skies and will then see substantial gas clouds.

i rounded off with a quick view of the veil nebula and this showed relatively well against the relatively dark skies but again should be much improved in the coming months.

Hope others are enjoying at least some astronomy at the present time.

Cheers

Shane

[John]

Nice report Shane

DSO hunting is quite hard work at the moment isn't it ?

I'll put the Eagle on my "to do" list as I've not seen it yet.

One object that I'm enjoying using an O-III filter on is M27. I generally prefer filterless views where possible but the O-III does seem to add a new dimension to this nebula even under summer skies.

[emadmoussa]

Frankly I can't be bothered going out these days...first, sky not dark enough and second, neighbours tend to stay up late in their garden, disturbing any quiet observing on my side.

[AndyWB]

I found M26 on the 4th, and I've gotta agree, it was a little disappointing. I did wonder if I just lacked the aperture to really make it stand out, but if not - well, there are lots of better clusters, put it that way. It made me wonder why Messier added it to his list.

I had a look at M16 on the 6th from what seemed to me to be a dark location (once twilight was over), and could just about see 'hints' of a nebula. It was like the background to the cluster was slightly brighter than it should've been, but it lacked any obvious brighter fuzzy patches that would shout 'yup, I'm a nebula'.

Certainly, it isn't as good as M17, a couple of degrees south of it!

[Tinker1947]

I took a peek at M11 last night and conditions were a lot better than the previous night,,,,,run right through my range of XW's for my eye's the 10mm and 14mm really made it sparkle,....

[dick_dangerous]

M11, M11, M11 - I've only ever seen it through binoculars. It was one of those things that hid behind the alders when I was a child. I tried to find it last night but didn't put enough effort in, and hence didn't find it. It was so light I couldn't make out the principle stars of Aquila properly, which didn't help... Possibly this is one for later in the summer. The lower Messier objects in Sagittarius and Scorpius - I haven't even tried!

DD

[bish]

Well done for getting out. I must admit that the conditions of high thin cloud and waiting until past midnight for it to be almost dark have put me off the last couple of clear nights.

[andrew63]

M11, M11, M11 - I've only ever seen it through binoculars. It was one of those things that hid behind the alders when I was a child. I tried to find it last night but didn't put enough effort in, and hence didn't find it. It was so light I couldn't make out the principle stars of Aquila properly, which didn't help... Possibly this is one for later in the summer. The lower Messier objects in Sagittarius and Scorpius - I haven't even tried!

DD

It's worth the effect as it's a real gem.

Nice targets seen Shane as conditions are not ideal. The thing i find with clusters some are improved with aperture/mag but others, the loser ones are best seen in low powers/ wide views - even binoculars.

andrew

[Mr Flibble]

Feeling I'd push my luck I then set my sights on M16, the Eagle Nebula, another object, in Serpens, never seen before as it's more often than not hiding behind houses or trees from home. Amazingly it was just in the right position. I star-hopped from M11 and found the open cluster easily. It is very nice in it's own right but try as I might I got only what can be described as tenuous glimpses of any nebulousity even with UHC and Oiii filters. I think my skies let me down here and I'll track this down from a better site in the future so not counted it yet. Looking at some of the skteches of this with less aperture it appears to be an object where you need either a bit of height or much better skies and will then see substantial gas clouds.

Nice going Shane. I was out last saturday night (or rather sunday morning) and picked out the Eagle neb for the first time. I ended up nudging around the area for a bit because I wasn't certain if the cluster was actually M16 because the nebulosity was very faint. My UHC brought it out a bit but not to any great extent, although I could just start to see some hints of dust lanes within the nebulosity. I suppose the light summer skies and its low altitude at the moment must contribute to its dim appearance. Quite a large neb with a pretty cluster, it would be great to see it in properly dark skies.

[AlexB67]

Nice report Shane

DSO hunting is quite hard work at the moment isn't it ?

I'll put the Eagle on my "to do" list as I've not seen it yet.

One object that I'm enjoying using an O-III filter on is M27. I generally prefer filterless views where possible but the O-III does seem to add a new dimension to this nebula even under summer skies.

Observing low in the sky it becomes really tricky where I am given time of year and LP. I had a go at M24 last night, but I didn't see it, the clearance is there from my garden, I did confirm that, but feel it is just too low in the sky to get any sort of decent view of things around there. Viewing a bit higher up as I did on Friday M11 was very good, but anything much below that and stuff got very tricky.

I did spot what I believe was more than likely M25. Will confirm tonight, made a little note of the surrounding stars to comfirm, but I'd say that was probably the most likely candidate, but it is a bit of a struggle when the constellations are pretty much impossible to see that low for me. A set of bins or a finder scope would really help in such cases I feel, but all I got is the red dot finder for now.

There is a lot of interesting stuff in that part of the sky just above the teapot I'd love to see, but it is like the teapot is blowing out too much steam to get the best out of it right now

[AlexB67]

Hope others are enjoying at least some astronomy at the present time.

Cheers

Shane

I most certainly am, it is still worth going out and try things out and gain experience Certainly last Friday and Saturday later at night between 1 - 2.30 AM were productive sessions for me. Before that my Messier count was at 14, after this weekend it has now risen to 20+ Plus some interesting other objects also.

[chiltonstar]

I had a look at M11 as well last night, despite the light sky and haze - still looks stunning though, even through 5" aperture. A nice cluster.

Just out of interest, I had a look at a few of the globs around towards the south (M5,M10, M12) to see if they were visible with a small aperture in such poor conditions; surprisingly they were, even though I had to cheat to find them (setting circles!). In fact, M5 in particular looked rather fine....

Chris

[Cartman]

I went to Belgium's darkest spot (allegedly) a few days ago, in the Hauts Fagnes. A year after buying my scope, I finally wanted to tick some more Messiers on my list.

And a very fruitful night it was. About a dozen first sightings: Ring nebula, Dumbbell nebula, some clusters, some galaxies... A bit of everything basically. And the topping on the cake: I saw both Neptune and Uranus for the first time.

It almost feels like I leveled up from rookie to novice that night :-)))

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[AlexB67]

last night certainly wasn't hit and miss, may be my scope was like a magnet, or I was on fire, whatever the case, wherever I pointed it, I found it

Had some fun scoping around M18, M24, M25, with M16, M17 all nearby it is a busy bit of sky around there. Visited some oldies too.

[swamp thing]

The Eagle neb I find is a pretty tough object. It's altitude never makes it a certainty. Any haze, or LP and your really up against it.