Over 2 million stars

[Littleguy80]

After observing the Perseus Nova last night, I decided to put together a spreadsheet to record observations of events like that. I also used the spreadsheet to tally up how many Messier objects I'd seen. 82 is my current count. That's the reason that my session began with an observation of M40. One of the "Messier mistakes", a pair of stars with no obvious reason for appearing on the famous list.

As I was in a numbers kind of mood, I decided to look at some Globular Clusters. The star counts are from SkySafari/Wikipedia so take them as best guesses!

M5 - Contains over 100,000 stars. While this cluster seemed to spread over a large area, it's core was very dense.

M92 - Contains the mass of approximately 330,000 suns. This felt smaller and more compact than M5.

M13 - Contains 300,000 stars though some estimates put it at over 1 million stars! Big and sprawling. I was able to see the propeller. This has become much easier since my initial observation of it.

M3 - Contains 500,000 stars. This felt like a textbook globular in terms of it's shape and spread of stars. It seems to have one extra bright star within it.

M53 - Contains approximately 500,000 stars. The faintest glob so far. Even at 200x there weren't many stars being resolved.

A quick stop was made to admire Albireo with the lovely golden and blue star pairing.

M56 - Contains the mass of approximately 230,000 suns. The oldest of the globulars visited at 13.7 billion years old! Fainter still than M53

I took a break from the globs and went in search of M27, the dumbbell nebula. This is big and easily seen without filters. After some failed attempts to see the central star I added a UHC filter. This gave a good increase in contrast with the dumbbell shape becoming even more obvious. The OIII filter was also tried, this seemed to show even more nebulosity beyond the main dumbbell shape. I really enjoyed seeing this planetary again.

As the OIII filter was in, I decided to take my first look at the Veil of the year. Starting with the Western Veil. It was faint but I could follow the full extent past Cyg 52. The Eastern Veil was also faint but not difficult to find. A good taster for late summer. There was time for one more globular cluster.

M71 - Contains at least 20,000 stars. Another fainter glob and appearing to be looser than the others, almost verging on being a dense open cluster to my eye.

I finished the session with Jupiter. I was really happy to catch the shadow of Europa as it transited across the planet. A great way to finish the night. If you've been adding up the numbers you'll see that the 7 globular clusters visited, collectively contained over 2 millions stars! 

 

[MarsG76]

Nice session....BUT.. did you actually count the stars???? HAHAHA

Seeing the shadow on Jupiter is a nice bonus....

[Paz]

That's a million times more productive than my observing last night. I had a look at Venus, Ceres, and struve 1657 in coma berenices, which totals to 2 stars. And I did count mine individually! ?

[Stu]

Great session, globs are excellent targets and do respond to a bit of aperture  Quite good under these light skies too.

You are right about M71, it seems a little confused about its identity!

[David Levi]

Yep globs are great. I had a look at the globular cluster M9 in the constellation Ophiuchus last night for the first time. Low down in the sky it was surprisingly bright. A classic globular cluster with no resolvable stars in my 8" scope.

I also failed/struggled (depending on my imagination) again to see the globular cluster NGC 5053 in Coma Berenices. Have you tried this one yet Neil? It's close to M3. I would be interested to know if you can see it in your 10" telescope next time you go to a dark sky site.

[Littleguy80]

9 minutes ago, David Levi said:

Yep globs are great. I had a look at the globular cluster M9 in the constellation Ophiuchus last night for the first time. Low down in the sky it was surprisingly bright. A classic globular cluster with no resolvable stars in my 8" scope.

I also failed/struggled (depending on my imagination) again to see the globular cluster NGC 5053 in Coma Berenices. Have you tried this one yet Neil? It's close to M3. I would be interested to know if you can see it in your 10" telescope next time you go to a dark sky site.

Thanks David. I did have a brief look for NGC 5053 last night without luck. Darker skies required. I’m planning a dark site trip tonight so I’ll give it a try there