A night of globs and planetaries

[harrym]

This is my last week in Cambridge before I head home for six weeks, so it's my last chance to use the 12" refractor for a while. The satellite images for last night suggested that cloud would start coming in after midnight but it looked like we could get a few hours of observing int, so I headed out with a friend.

We started off with Saturn. As with most of the other objects, we used a 28mm Nirvana giving 215x. The seeing was so dreadful that the Cassini Division wasn't visible - not the first time that's happened this year. Despite this, 5 moons were visible, though Tethys was very difficult as the sky wasn't fully dark yet and there's a lot of light pollution low in the south.

Next up was globular NGC 6712 in Scutum. This appeared quite sparse with a few resolved stars. (Edit: we saw M11 too and it was great. Not sure how I forgot that)

The sky was fully dark now so we moved on to M22. This was a marvellous sight, though the light pollution meant that it didn't look quite as impressive as M13 in my opinion. Staying in Sagittarius, NGC 6818 the Little Gem lived up to its name. It appeared to have a brighter ring just in from the outer edge.

I thought NGC 6229 in Hercules showed hints of graininess but maybe that was my eyes deceiving me as the brightest stars are mag 15.5. NGC 6426 in Ophiuchus was a completely different proposition - it was extremely sparse and quite hard to find, despite its listed magnitude of 10.9. It reminded me of NGC 5053 in Coma.

NGC 6781 in Aquila was a relatively large but fairly nondescript planetary. After observing it we headed over to the nearby 16" scope as there were some people observing there. We had a quick look at M13 which was lovely as usual then headed back to the 12".

Our next target was NGC 6934 in Delphinus. I'd say this was the best of the NGC globulars we observed; it was slightly resolved in the outer regions, rather like how the brighter Messier globs look in small scopes. NGC 7006 on the other hand, while still very easy, was too faint for any sort of resolution.

NGC 7008 in Cygnus was one of the strangest planetaries I've ever seen. It was very asymmetrical - there was a brighter patch on each side, but one of these patches was much brighter than the other. The 13th magnitude central star was easily visible.

By now the cloud was starting to come in so we decided to have a look at some objects in the clearer region of sky in the south-east. M2 and M15 were very nice, and I could clearly see how the Saturn Nebula (NGC 7009) got its name - the extensions looked similar to a low-power view of Saturn's rings.

Finally we had a look at Neptune. There were some moments of very good seeing in between the clouds, in which the disc was clearly visible and sharply defined. Sadly the clouds were covering most of the sky now and we decided to call it a day (or a night?!).

I was slightly disappointed to only get three and a bit hours of observing done, but for this summer that's pretty good. Now let's hope we get more clear night this week!

[Stu]

Another great report Harry, a very productive 3.5 hours despite the clouds  

[Knighty2112]

Nice report. Well done!  I view the Saturn nebula for the first time last night, however not with my C8 SCT as I had issues with it on my goto mount, but with my wide field AR90S f5.5 'frac, so magnification was much lower. Easily visible, but due to lower magnification I couldn't make out any extensions that give it its name. None the less easily identifiable as a planetary nebula still. 

[alan potts]

Lovely report,that's a cracker of a line, last chance to use the 12 inch refractor for a while,I like it.

Alan

[Littleguy80]

Brilliant report. Would love the opportunity to try a scope like that. Sounds like you made great use of it  

[Richard Hather]

Excellent report and some cracking targets found, I may have to have a look at the Saturn Nebula myself next time I'm out although from the forcast cloud for the next week ?