This Week I Have Mostly Been Looking at Globular Clusters

[dick_dangerous]

With a flurry of observing reports today, one would suspect that we might actually have seen some clear skies for once!

Thought I'd add my little report to the mix. It was nothing special - school night, so really shouldn't have stayed up until nearly midnight, but of course it never properly gets dark in June...

I got to the park late, about 10.45, after a faintly bizarre episode involving someone knocking over a neighbours parked moped. I missed most of it having been in the toilet for the pre-flight pee. There was good transparency but when I lined up on my first object, Saturn, it was swiftly obvious that the seeing was pants. I got fleeting glimpses of the Cassini Division and the subtle banding, but otherwise Saturn was a bit of a squib. Mars was similarly ropey, but as it gets further past opposition it really starts to diminish in size. Role on 2016...

DSO-wise I had a bit of a challenge for myself. Like most of us I've been going through Messiers and with it being June, it's one of the few times in the year that Scorpius is visible from the UK. So I turned my attention to what is a challenging area of the sky in Britain. It never rises that high so a lot of the detail is lost in the murk, and finding DSOs in the hazy glow, even to the south out of London, is quite a headache. My first attempt at M4 proved fruitless, although I had lovely views of Antares, one of my favourite stars. Nudging up from Antares brought me to M80 which was suprisingly bright and compact. Even a bit more magnification couldn't bring any stars out of the teeming mass. The superior BST eyepieces really helped bring it to life though. I moved back down to M4 and with a little persistence managed to locate it through the haze. On a moonless night in Spain I should imagine this is a spectacular globular cluster, but from London it induces eye-ache and is one for the AV. I moved up to Ophiucus then, and had a fruitless search for M9 which remains unfound for me. I did manage to get the ghost of M107 though, again hovering on the edge of direct vision.

I realised then that it was getting close to midnight, but I did have a quick glance at the moon before packing up, catching a glimpse of the ISS overhead.

Let's hope for a few more nights like that, and for some clear skies that don't coincide with a bright moon!

DD

[andrew63]

It's a rich region of the sky.  I have found M9 can be quite a tricky object - not helped by it's lowish elevation - and with your sky background to boot !

andrew

[cotterless45]

Got a couple of globular busting hours in this morning, when the Moon was well down.

All the usual suspects in Ophiuchus. Then looked north east and there was Pegasus with M31 ahead of it. Then a stunning view south to M11, quite high and one of our best open clusters ,

Nick.