Tuesday is globaton night!

[Davesellars]

Well it cleared over wonderfully at 8am so I hurried on out at 9ish and setup for 10 with the C8 when it was just about dark enough to start.  I made a glimpse of Saturn but the seeing wasn't all that so I moved quickly on to attempt to clear the remaining Herschel 400 objects in Ophiuchus and Sagittarius...

NGC 6440 (New) gc mag 9.2 - Very faint and slight core visible with a small area around the core visible

NGC 6520 (New) oc - Quite compact but clearly resolved open cluster at 190x however this seems to have a cloud around the actual cluster which makes for an interesting feature.

NGC 6540 (New) gc mag 9.3 - Required the use of 190x to faintly pull this out of the background with sufficient contrast.  Small & very faint

NGC 6624 (New) gc mag 7.9 - Very bright and obvious decent small core to the globular cluster.

NGC 6638 (New) gc mag 9.0 - Slight core with some area seen easily around the core.

M22 gc mag 5.1 - Stopped by this for a decent look. Nicely resolved at 190x with brighter stars to the fore-front of the cluster. the shape looks slightly irregular certainly not round.

NGC 6642 (New) gc mag 9.1 - Some brightness to the very small core discerned.  Small globular cluster only faintly detected area outside of the core.

NGC 6629 (New) Planetary Nebula mag 11.2 - Easily visible a low magnification almost stellar-like however at 190x resolves into a faint small disc but with no detail.

NGC 6568 (New) oc - Fine scattering of faint stars nicely resolved at 117x almost filling the FOV.

NGC 6583 (New) oc - Small hardly resolved open cluster.

M25 - Lovely large cluster shown best at low magnification (54x) with the 24mm EP.  Considerable amount of stars of differing magnitude.

NGC 6645 (New) - Medium sized cluster filled with fine lowish mag stars in the centre and surrounded by brigher stars.  Best viewed at 117x

NGC 6517 (New) gc mag 10.2 -  This one was tough!!!  Very faint really required averted vision to pick it out.  No detail but the brightened area looked a little larger than a small cluster.

So that was all for Oph. and Sag.  One (NGC 6451) escaped me as it hid low down down behind a tree before I could get to it.  Perhaps another night or it'll have to wait until next year along with NGC 6144 in Sco which is now not possible.

On to Bootes for a triplet of galaxies that needed to be swept up.

NGC 5557 (New)  Elliptical Galaxy mag 11 - The 19mm Panoptic shows the core with some brightness.  The 15mm TV Plossl adds a little more to the actual core.  Slightly oval shape.

NGC 5676 (New) Spiral Galaxy mag 11.2 - Obvious core and shape quite pronounced showed well at 117x

NGC 5689 (New) Spiral Galaxy mag 11.9 - Elongated narrow(ish) core easily visible but very faint.  The angle of the galaxy was easily visible from its core.

So that was those complete.  I took a quick break and pointed the scope towards M13 - A current favourite which was absolutely spectacular at 230x with the 6mm BCO resolved it seemed right down to the core and holding a decent brightness.

On to Pegasus...

NGC 7479 (New) Spiral Galaxy mag 10.9 - This was tough however this is not in an idea position at the moment being more in to the LP.  A very faint brightening of the area was seen slightly easier with averted vision.  Possibly should see more of this though so will return to this later on when it's further round and higher.

Then clouds decided that was that...  Although it actually more or less cleared again as I was packing up (typical) the transparency seemed to be suffering much more than when I started - it certainly did not seem as dark.  I had my cup of tea and watched a few Perseids flash through the sky as well as a host of satellites or space junk floating through.

[alan potts]

Golly, you seem to have got through more targets in a night than I have managed in a week, some really good ones there, M22 is about my favourite, fantastic with the 18 inch. A joy to read your reports Dave.

[FenlandPaul]

Another productive night, Dave - nice read.  You're certainly taking advanatage of the "availability" of Sagittarius at the moment.

Paul

[baggywrinkle]

That was a busy night...over us it was thick cloud yet again...

[RobertI]

Nice report, the fainter globs must have been an interesting challenge to try and resolve, must try some these myself.

[Davesellars]

Thanks all!

Alan:  I try my best to get in a reasonable amount of objects but spending a decent amount of time at least at two different magnifications or 3 depending on the object.  A couple of these fainter ones had me chasing my tail going through about 6 different EPs just to get a visual on them.  The real on the edge stuff I go to my Baader Classic Orthos - the 10mm normally comes up trumps where others can fail and even the 6mm giving a rather large magnification (214x) but such increase in contrast can make the different between seeing something and not.

M22 was far better than the last time I observed it.  I put it down to a bit more experience I guess.

 

Paul:  Yes! Sagittarius done and dusted for this year I think.  Next period of darkness this will be pretty much out of reach or rather too low for anything meaningful so it was good to sweep up this time those on the H400 - The couple of scrag-ends hopefully I'll catch next year.  I'm happy I've observed the Messiers here in good detail this year quite a few times it always seems such a short observing window at this latitude to view them.

 

 

[laudropb]

Another most enjoyable report Dave. You certain manage to get through some number of targets in a session.

[Size9Hex]

You'll have nowt left to look for next season at this rate! 

Hope you don't mind me asking how much time you spend on each one? I've had a couple of sessions that stand out in which I whizzed through a load of Messier objects quicker than I would have liked (one in Virgo and one in Sagittarius) when I realised I'd be unlikely to get another decent chance for a year. Although I was happy to bag them, I didn't feel entirely happy that I'd done them justice and I'm looking forward to a slower pace next time they come around. On the other hand, I wonder if it's different with some of the Herschels? Some are so small and faint that I haven't any need to dwell on them!

[Davesellars]

Pfft! No chance of running out of objects I think! It is never ending!  All the other reports on here just highlight how much there is out there that you don't think of until someone has mentioned it.

Well the session was around 2 hours 45m actual observing time.  During this I logged 15 new objects and 3 Messiers.  Most of the NGCs I spent an average of 10 minutes on.  Star-hopping to find the next object position was pretty much negligible time consumption.  However actually seeing the next object in some of these cases takes more work and swapping of eyepieces and getting whatever you can from it at lower and higher magnifications.     This sounds about correct although some I may only spend 5 minutes on the majority I like to spend my time to take in as much as possible before moving on.

Virgo...  Yes I've done that before when I was going through the Messier galaxies through there.  I was somewhat more inexperienced though   I've revisited since and have a whole load of stuff in there yet to do for the H400.  Then after the first H400 there's the H2 and H3... although I may need a bigger scope

[Size9Hex]

Thanks, interesting stuff. Glad I'm not the only one to zip through Virgo! For me some objects get a cursory couple of minutes if they don't look like they're going to offer much, while at the other end of the scale, I'm almost embarrassed how long I sometimes spend looking at the particularly intriguing ones!

[Special K]

Good one, Dave, and thanks for the generous reports!  It's certainly true that others' reports and lists open up more ideas which form a ending journey. I found that a detailed atlas really broadened my horizons.......and a bigger aperture didn't hurt either!

Regarding time on target, I think I'm pretty brief but haven't measured it. I take a lot of breaks, plus swapping EP's so am continually returning to the FOV and reaffirming what I can see. 

Clear skies!