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A wow moment!

DRT

By DRT
in Observing - Deep Sky

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DRT

DRT

Posted
Posted

I was out for a few hours last night under partly clear skies and mostly concentrating on rather blurry views of Mars and Saturn.

I then looked directly overhead and noticed it looked very clear so told the GOTO to head up to the Whirlpool galaxy. I could make our the two centres and a small amount of gas but nothing spectacular.

I then picked-up my new planisphere and looked for anything that might be interesting overhead. The highest DSO marked on the map was "M13", which I had never looked at previously. Click, click, click on the GOTO and...

WOW!!!

Half a million tightly-packed stars burst into view in the centre of my Baader Scopos 35mm. I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing as this is the first globular cluster I have looked at. I replaced the EP with the Nagler 17mm and M13 completely filled the FOV with a never ending number of stars. I looked at it for about an hour and the more I looked the more stars I saw.

An amazing experience.

After checking my books I tried M5 but it was much lower and in the haze so will give that another go sometime soon. Any suggestions of similar objects to look for at this time of year would be much appreciated.

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acey

acey

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M13 is certainly beautiful. The "propeller" feature is fun to search for. Do give M51 another try - and bear in mind that it's nearly a thousand times further away. The "small amount of gas" you saw was a few billion stars.

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DRT

DRT

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M5 knocks M13 out of the water. Just wait a while and Serpens ,under Corona Borealis will rise. Certainly looked spectacular last night seeing this most overlooked globular,

http://messier.seds.org/m/m005.html

Nick.

Thanks, Nick. M5 actually looked much smaller than M13 last night so I must have only been picking up the core. Will certainly look again.

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Joves

Joves

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And to think I've seen some people comment that they don't know what the fuss is with globulars. Personally, I think they're as impressive as anything to be viewed through a scope.

We are fortunate down here in the south to have a couple of absolute beauties. One of them, Omega Centauri (which is the largest known globular to be seen), I was only looking at a couple of nights ago for about the thousandth time, and it still knocks my socks off. 47 Tucanae is another which never ceases to impress. Here is a capture I got of it a little while back:

post-30253-0-99047000-1398613089_thumb.j

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WaveSoarer

WaveSoarer

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Joves, I was lucky enough to see 47 Tuc in January this year when on holiday in New Zealand. It knocked my socks off even though I only had access to my trusty pair of bins. A spectucular sight - and in the Southern hemisphere there are so many.

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Droogie 2001

Droogie 2001

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Funny that this post is here as I was going to post a similar experience from Saturday night. There was an unexpected break in the clouds in fact the sky was cloudless which is not what my weather app was telling me.

Anyway set and started observing Mars and Saturn as per DRT post which were ok but still a bit low to full appreciate the recent good views of Mars especially.

Decided to have a look at some double stars and see if I could split the double / double.

After a while had a look at what else there was and thought I would give M92 a go as had not viewed this before.

The view was amazing with a dense core but more impressive was that I could make out the scattering of stars extending out. Now I have looked at M5, M13 & M3 before but for some reason this was stunning. I then slewed over to its bigger brother M13 and this was even more striking.

Not sure if was just that the weather and conditions were better or whether my eyes were better dark adapted than some other times. I was also not using my Focal reducer as I had been viewing Mars & Saturn so perhaps the 'zoomed' in view as opposed to the wide field of view was also making a difference. Anyway really enjoyed them and made the night worthwhile.

Something I am trying to instil into myself is to take my time on objects. Too often with GOTO its easy to zip from one DSO to next without actually looking at something for a least 10+ minutes.

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Daniel-K

Daniel-K

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Try M3 in Bootes...its quite high now and also stunning..

I can get mesmerised looking at those globs..

They nearly make me want to give up galaxies and start hunting globulars!

Mark

mmmmmmmm....nah!!!!

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michael.h.f.wilkinson

michael.h.f.wilkinson

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Nice report! M13 is one of my all-time favourite DSOs. It was the first one after M42 that I could find (as a teenager, with my parents' bins), and the first one I looked at though my C8. My jaw dropped at the sight of so many stars in such a tight space. It is one of the ultimate WOW objects

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