More Notes from the City

[dick_dangerous]

Hi All,

August is one of my favourite months for astronomy - it gets dark at a slightly more reasonable time but the nights are still tolerably mild. Tonight was hot and clear, with a little haze around the horizon so I trotted down to the park with the agenda of pushing my ST80 to its limit in these urban skies and hunting down some nice elusive DSOs. With no moon and no cloud I had the killer combination! I could see stars down to about Mag 4.5, which for Bushy is a really good, dark night.

I started with M11, still sparkling wonderfully at 16x. I'm declaring this my new warm-up object now that Saturn is too low to observe. I then hopped over to M13 to make sure I had my eye in and the 'scope was cooled. It glowed wonderfully, the best I've seen it yet with the ST80, so I was feeling pretty hopeful for some new Messiers.

M27 was one I struggled to find as a teen. As a relatively bright, concentrated object I knew it was a good one to seek out now that the moon was out of the way. At first I was squinting into the eyepiece at random faint stars, but I wasn't convinced I'd found it, especially because it's described as being spectacular. So I referred to good old TL@O and found out I was using the wrong star of Sagitta as a guide. So I tried again and straight away got the elongated blob slap in the middle of the field of view. This was a big moment for me because I'd never found the wretched thing with the Tal - at 40x it even started to show a little shape but made me realise that I need to find a way to get more apeture.

After some time of viewing M27 I went for something a lot more challenging; the open/globular/whatever cluster M71 in Sagitta. It's easy to locate but with the small scope and the urban skies, its diffuse glow was always going to be tricky. I managed to find it - a very faint smudge in the telescope, but this will be one to seek out when I'm in dark skies next.

I shifted my focus next to Lyra's two Messiers. The Ring Nebula is easy, even from an urban park, and with a bit of magnification revealed its Cheerio shape. I tried to use the barlow but it appeared the skies weren't as stable as I thought they were and I struggled to see anything with it. Finally I aimed for M56, another faint globular. High in the sky I stood a really good chance with it, and I managed to get it first time. It was surprisingly easy to spot and seemed quite bright, probably a result of altitude. Even with higher magnification it didn't really require any averted vision.

Before I packed up and ran home to Mrs Dangerous I had a quick look at M31 - the view was awful to the north and east with the orange sodium glow of the city making most of the galaxy invisible. Just the bright core could be seen as a slightly fuzzy glow. I think it'll give more as it shifts round to the south come the autumn, but right now it's easier to see from the doorstep. These are the challenges of urban astronomy though - one might say the Vega-ries. Ho ho ho...

DD

[Scooot]

Cheersdick, (have I evaded the censors)

keep it up, look forward to more nights from the city.

[swamp thing]

Nice report.

M71 that's good going from town, with small aperture

[andrew63]

It's one of my favourite parts of the sky around Lyra and Sagitta - so rich in a wide field. Look forward to more installments...

andrew

[dick_dangerous]

Nice report.

M71 that's good going from town, with small aperture

I'll be honest, I'm glad the wife wasn't there. She'd have been extremely sarcastic about it... As far as the size of telescope is concerned I'm lucky to have extremely good peripheral vision. I still want more aperture though!