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High Sierra


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On vacation at Lake Tahoe and have the bins with me this time. The weather has been perfect so a quick jaunt uphill out of the town provided some excellent views. The mountains are high all around us so the moon was not up until much later.  

As my eyes adapted, the Milky Way started to emerge. Without the moon this would have been much better even with local LP. The stunning sights were to the south west  where Jupiter hovers over Scorpius. Antares was a brilliant beacon and the tail clearly visible leading to a full view of the Teapot of Sagittarius which has Saturn near its handle. This alone was worth the climb! 

With the bins steadied on a convenient lean-to wooden fence, I hauled in some nice finds. M4 was a soft splotch compared to M22 which is bold as anything. M8 Lagoon was naked eye and in bins showed plenty of nebulousity. The Triffid’s cluster was neatly marked and thought I could detect a puff in there. Up to the M24 Star Cloud which this time reminded me of the smiling cat asterism in Auriga. As always this was a dense, well...cloud!  Aptly named.  To the east lay another Messier open cluster (thinking M50?). The Swan was bright but struck me as quite small without a telescope, while the Eagle’s cluster was nice and bright. 

Holding as steady as possible I could make out the oval shape of Saturn and those bright moons of Jupiter.  The highlight was discovering M8 Prolemy’s Cluster behind a fir tree!  This is a dazzler and was at a great angle to view from the fence.  The nearby M6 Butterfly was a nice bundle of stars as well.  All in all a refreshing and uplifting view of the summer sky.  

This is a great place to visit day and night, in all seasons.  There are some locations you can drive to if you want absolute dark but for a 10 minute walk, this is pretty good.   Clear (binocular) Skies!

 

Edited by Special K
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