47 Tucanae from New Zealand

[moondog]

Jsut come in from a spell outside with the WO ZS66.

First time I've been able to see 47 Tucanae with a scope. What a fantastic globular!

The sky wasn't particularly transparent but, even so, 47 Tuc was easy to find on the photo tripod.

My best view was with the Russian 25mm plossl at approx 16x mag. The view covered about 3 deg of sky. 47 Tuc is just over 1/2 deg wide and mag 4.0. In comparison M13 is 1/3 deg wide and mag 5.8.

I could see the central condensation and a surprising amount of stars spread out from the core. There appeared to be some hint of star streaming in a couple of positions. I couldn't make out any difference in the colour of any of the stars but it is only a (pretty good) 66mm travel scope.

I tried to find the largest globular in the sky - Omega Centauri - but failed to find it because of patchy cloud and because I'm still learning my way about the Southern sky. It would have been good to compare views of the 2 globs. Omega Centauri is almost double the apparent size of 47 Tuc and even brighter at mag 3.5. I look forward to being able to get a good look at O C soon.

MD

[barkis]

Keep us posted on the globs MD, I'm drooling here.

Ron.