C55 - NGC 7009 - Saturn nebula

[WaveSoarer]

The night of 10/9/15 was the clearest it's been for a while and I actually started the session viewing the galaxy NGC 6503. I find the eq mount a little awkward in this patch of ths sky close to polaris as it never quite moves the way you really want it to. The galaxy itself is well worth a visit as it's bright and easily discernable as an elongated smudge. It's also quite easy to locate. After I'd completed an imaging run I went off to explore another region of the sky and I settled on looking for the Saturn planetary nebula which had had cleared the neighbours' house by then (my view low down to the south is a bit restricted). 

It's quite an easy hop to the Saturn nebula but I couldn't really see very much notiecable at medium power (with my 15 mm EP) apart from a fairly empty looking field of faint looking stars. None of these looked all that fuzzy. I upped the magnification to 200 x (with my 5 mm EP) and, sure enough, one of the stars (after a little hunting around) was distinctly fuzzier (not point-like) and distinctly elongated. It was fairly bright, even at this high power, and I expect that it may have benefited from the use of my OIII filter to teaze out more detail. Overall it did look reminiscent of Saturn at a low magnification in poor seeing.

While I was in the area I also viewed the open cluster M73 which was quite a small cluster with only a handful of stars visible. I then moved on to the globular cluster M2 which was signinificanty brighter, overall, than M73 and appeared as a round compact milky patch, which dimmed rapidly towards its edges. There was just a hint of graininess to its appearance but it wasn't really possible to pick out any brighter member stars. Finally I moved on to the globular cluster M2 which, being much brighter and larger, was more of a treat to the eye. It was much more grainy with the odd member star popping briefly in to view.

[Mike73]

Sounds like a nice little session.

NGC 6503 was also a oval smudge even with my 16" from a dark site!

Yeah the Saturn nebula is nice though, almost floats through the sky in the same was that Saturn does...

M73 is pretty near the top of my list for Messier's greatest flops though, I mean its pretty pathetic really isn't it?  Nice to go from that to M2 though.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice report. The Saturn Nebula certainly benefits from using an O-III filter

[cotterless45]

Nice report, both M2 and M15 respond well when upping the magnification,

Nick.

[WaveSoarer]

Thanks all. I should point out that I looked at M72 before M2. I lost the 7 when I was typing. Not one of my strongpoints - along with proof reading....