Andalucía holiday notes

[neural]

Last week I had the good fortune to spend three short sessions with 16x70 binocs and monopod in the grounds of a B&B / converted farm just past Trevélez in the Sierra Nevada, Andalucía. I've described the conditions in detail in another thread, but I thought I'd share my observations here - in chronological order so a bit higgledy-piggledy.

22nd Sep
NGC 457: Seen upside-down but all the major stars in the body clearly seen, obvious dense clusterness behind, very pretty.
M31: Obvious naked-eye, spectacular at 16x; only the centre is bright, but the wings spread out more than half a field (i.e. about 2 degrees) in diameter and shade off imperceptibly into darkness. The companion above it [M110] is obvious.
Double Cluster: Not high in the sky but obvious naked eye, pretty much direct vision.
Stock 2: Actually caught my eye - I had no idea it was so prominent. A big round display of stars, fully resolved, fairly evenly spread across the area with a stick figure of a man comprising the brightest ones. A shallow arc of bright stars leads down to the Double Cluster itself.
M33: Found without too much difficulty. Direct vision, largish, round soft oval, not bright anywhere. Hard to believe it can be naked-eye, though rather low in the sky.

23rd Sep
M22: Above lambda Sgr, a prominent largish globular, quite condensed, a hint of fried-egg appearance with a halo of three times the diameter of the core. Near to a little triangle of stars with a fainter one in the middle.
M8: Due right of lambda Sgr, a very obvious nebula, with in its right-hand end a pair of stars the lower brighter than the upper, and in the left a little spray of stars like a tiny bunch of flowers, an open cluster I suppose [NGC 6530], resolved with averted vision, both embedded in a fine nebula glow.
M28 Just a degree right ot lambda Sgr, a small but obvious globular, obviously not stellar, direct vision.
M24, M18, M17 and M16: None naked-eye, but Milky Way is washed out by light pollution in this direction and there is some cloud. M24 is a wonderful binocular field, a large group of stars of all brightnesses with stripes of Milky Way flowing through. M18 is small, not bright, with perhaps four stars at the top end. M17 is a smear, sort of L-shaped with the long arm left and the short arm down. Gives the impression of extending considerably further upwards but I think this is just background Milky Way glow. M16 nebulosity is direct vision but really intensifies with averted vision, 4-5 stars in a rocket or house shape at the apex and four more at the base.
M11: Sct is a naked-eye constellation which is quite fun. In binocs M11 is obvious and triangular as ever.
M26: A tiny shred of nebulosity with a star at its lower right corner.
NGC 6712: I think I can identify this as a small roundish faint glow, quite small and quite faint, at exactly two-thirds of a field away from M11.
M2: Not visible naked-eye. Very small and bright, very condensed. Looks almost pale bluish, strangely.
M15: Looking very much like M2 in binocs, very small and condensed, slightly larger halo than M2. I think I can see it naked-eye as non-stellar with averted vision, but it is close to field stars which may be giving a false impression.
NGC 7789: Happened to notice this. Large, roundish but not perfectly round, soft but granular but not twinkly.
M72: Very small, very faint. Would have guessed it was a glob. At the apex of an equilateral triangle.
NGC 7293: Actually not that difficult to find, since all the necessary guide stars are naked-eye! Quite beautiful, held by a triangle of field stars perfectly around it. Large, soft, circular, faint but obvious in the field. Beautiful pale object. On reflection, I think I can see a hole in it, circumferentially orientated in the top right quadrant.

Sep 25th
NGC 6946 and 6939: Two smallish faint objects, roughly the same size. The slightly smaller, elongated one (6946) has a double at one end and a single star at the other. [Looks like what I was seeing is the central bar.] The rounder faint patch one (6939) is held on one side by a shallow isosceles triangle of faint stars. Both objects are averted-vision but not difficult.
NGC 7000: Really just a patch of sky that is not dark like the surrounding area, with no twinkling within it. Two or three bright stars along one edge.
NGC 6960: With strongly averted vision and real effort I can identify something running down from 52 Cyg which must be part of the Veil. Not by any means easy, just an elongated stripe of paleness.

The highlights I would say were M31 and the Helix nebula. I also had the great pleasure of introducing my wife to M31, naked-eye and with binocs - she spontaneously mentioned the experience the next day which is one for the record books

[alan potts]

Nice report!! The fact you are further south will have helped no end and made some of the targets so much better. I was looking at many of these last night with the 12 inch but I wanted to look at M6 and & 7 as well but the walnut tree wouldn't move for me, chainsaw time!

Alan 

[Piero]

Super duper! You had a lot of fun! Nice targets!  

I never managed to see the Veil nebula without filter. However, with a good OIII under reasonably dark skies.. oh man.. what a beauty!  

 

[neural]

7 hours ago, Piero said:

Super duper! You had a lot of fun! Nice targets!  

I never managed to see the Veil nebula without filter. However, with a good OIII under reasonably dark skies.. oh man.. what a beauty!  

 

Certainly did!

I saw the Veil with the same binoculars last year in La Palma. I'm still kicking myself that I didn't make it up onto the caldera at night, but even from my holiday cottage it was not difficult. I have a feeling though that that was the other side of the Veil ... the part around 52 Cyg is the fainter I think?

[neural]

15 hours ago, alan potts said:

Nice report!! The fact you are further south will have helped no end and made some of the targets so much better. I was looking at many of these last night with the 12 inch but I wanted to look at M6 and & 7 as well but the walnut tree wouldn't move for me, chainsaw time!

Alan 

Cheers Alan. In fact the images that stay in my memory from my occasional trips south are not so much the binocular views of objects, but the naked-eye views of constellations. This time it was the whole 'teapot' of Sgr (luckily I had a low southern horizon); a few years ago in Greece it was the whole of Scorpius rising over the sea, so iconic.

[alan potts]

11 hours ago, neural said:

Cheers Alan. In fact the images that stay in my memory from my occasional trips south are not so much the binocular views of objects, but the naked-eye views of constellations. This time it was the whole 'teapot' of Sgr (luckily I had a low southern horizon); a few years ago in Greece it was the whole of Scorpius rising over the sea, so iconic.

I have seen that many a time when in Greece, it was about my favourite holiday place and you can see all of these hard objects that the UK miss out on with them being so low. I get all of the two from here though most of Greece has 4-7 degrees on me on top.

Alan

[Special K]

Great report on a long list. It really is a treat to fly south!!!  I don't know for certain but think the La Palma caldera may be darker than the one on Tenerife?  I went up Mt Tiede a few summers back but could still see some glow from the southern resorts. 

M8 is perfectly described above!  Thanks for posting

[neural]

On 04/10/2016 at 21:20, Special K said:

Great report on a long list. It really is a treat to fly south!!!  I don't know for certain but think the La Palma caldera may be darker than the one on Tenerife?  I went up Mt Tiede a few summers back but could still see some glow from the southern resorts. 

M8 is perfectly described above!  Thanks for posting

Thanks Kevin! I believe you're right - I didn't have the guts to go up there at night (the roads are very good but very twisty), but we went a few times in the day while we were there; it's certainly a spectacular place and the observatory is also well worth a visit. You can see Mt Teide quite clearly from there so I would assume that you can see at least some of the light from the Tenerife resorts at night, but it would be a lot further away and perhaps not a problem.