Report 05/07/17 M2 and Coathanger

[Mr niall]

Got a little over excited and was all set up before it got properly dark - in fact I waited until I could see Altair and from that point on was resolutely camped outside.

But I had a lovely hour watching twilight fade and the stars come out - amazingly after my eyes adjusted I could see bands of darkness almost sweeping across the sky from east to west and it gave me a great chance to play with my bins which haven’t seen enough use of late. Had a great time chasing satellites around and found M71 in Sagitta - in fact all around Sagitta looked amazing. Had a go at finding M27 too but didn’t turn anything up. But did make an amazing accidental discovery between Sagitta and Albireo. A lovely asterism of a line of almost perfectly straight stars with a hook shape underneath! What was this mysterious thing?! Absolutely gorgeous. At that point I got called in for tea (Mum!! I’m busy!! I hate Sundays)) and had to bath the kids so that gave me a chance to investigate and learn about my discovery - Brocchi’s cluster or “The coathanger”. What really pleases me is that this is my first “stumbled upon” new find ever and first genuinely bins only dedicated target so was super chuffed. Did a quick drawing but this is surprisingly challenging with unmounted bins and my arms had pretty much turned to jelly by the end of it! Just don’t go printing it off and giving it to Hubble as an accurate map! There was a mystery object above it that turned out to be a close double.

So after that I had a go at M71 in the scope but couldn’t really pin it down, but wasn’t too surprised as I’ve struggled already on m71 in the last few weeks. So I turned my sights on M2 and realised at this point that the Messier I’d found a couple of weeks ago and labelled as M2 was actually M15. Oops... Anyway, wasn’t too hard a find and I can definitely say I’ve found it now. Needed to give it a good 15 mins to really reveal itself in the eyepiece as it was fairly faint (and the sky was lighting in the background as the moon was making its way round the side of the house) but was small and compact with a definite brighter core and moments of granularity.

Another good evening!

[Demonperformer]

Congratulations. Stumbling upon things for the first time is one of the delights of this hobby that never gets old.

[Littleguy80]

Great report and sketches! Can’t wait to get outside myself now!

[Trikeflyer]

Love the coat hanger in my apollo 15 x 70 bins and had a similar experience 'discovering it'. Always look at it for I get the bins out and it's up.

Great sketches.

[des anderson]

Well, someone really enjoyed themselves....and the sketches BRILLIANT. Des

[Wiu-Wiu]

There's a couple of bright stars in the area of your 'mystery object'. You've drawn them in at the exact location. 

 

Haven't you seen NGC 6802? A small cluster just at the side of the coathanger: (left on the picture)

[Mr niall]

19 minutes ago, Wiu-Wiu said:

There's a couple of bright stars in the area of your 'mystery object'. You've drawn them in at the exact location. 

 

Haven't you seen NGC 6802? A small cluster just at the side of the coathanger: (left on the picture)

Thanks that’s really helpful - yes I’m pretty sure it was those two stars at the top of this picture - thought I saw a hint of nebulosity in there so that got me wondering whether it was just stars.

no I’d not seen that NGC very cool thanks for pointing it out I’ll have a go at it with my Mak. My bins are just a tad too big to be held comfortably for any length of time. When I get round to building a parallelogram I’ll have a longer look too.

[Wiu-Wiu]

I missed the fact you used binoculars for that  

 

The ngc is a H400 list object, so it's moderately bright and can be seen by modest amateur telescopes under "most" of our skies. 

 

extra tip: if you plan your sessions, you can look the objects up on deepskylog , a website dedicated to sketching, but you can also just log your other observations (no pictures there, but you do get a reference picture from Aladin) - I always try to look what other people have sketched there with comparable telescopes. It's just cool to know what to expect  

Give it a try! It's very addicting!