Sagittarius Overhead

[Epick Crom]

Hi my fellow stargazers! Well after one whole month of constant clouds and rain, I finally caught a break last night with a clear dark sky( relatively speaking). The milky way was glowing overhead with Sagittarius right in the thick of it. My 10 inch dob was ready to go, so was I ! Observing overhead is not exactly easy with a dobsonian but the clear views due to the least amount of atmosphere make it worth the trouble. All the following objects were observed in Sagittarius:

M 8: Woah, super bright nebula. Best view I've had of it so far, it was actually glowing with a light blue colour.  Cluster NGC 6530 looked great as well.

M 22: Large, bright and fully resolved in my scope, this showpiece globular is so beautiful. Stars as far as the eye can see!

M 17: Lovely Swan Nebula. Milky glow looks just like a celestial swan.

M 23: A fine scattering of stars. 70x provided me with the best view of this open cluster.

M 24: Awesome "star cloud" of the milky way. Too many stars to count. An awesome sight!

NGC 6822: Barnard's Galaxy. I was not expecting to find this one but did. A soft diffuse glow with tiny points of light which may be star forming regions within the galaxy. A thrilling find, I was overjoyed. I will be revisiting this one to study it in detail. 

M28: Beautiful, bright globular cluster, resolved some stars. A tight ball of stars.

NGC 6638: This planetary nebula took some finding. Tiny and stellar even at 185x, it finally bloomed at 240x. This is easily the tiniest planetary nebula I have observed so far!

The night was a great success, even though I could not locate a number of objects : M55, M75, NGC 6445 and NGC 6507 among many others. I was also unsuccessful in finding M 13 in Hercules on my first attempt. Oh well, they will have to wait until the next clear night 😊

 

Joe

Edited August 2, 2021 by Epick Crom

[fwm891]

Great  stuff - I'm just a tiny bit jealous.................... 🤫

[jock1958]

Very nice report. Checked out this area for the first time last week thanks to some inspiration from a fellow SGL'r.  Even though it's fairly low in the sky up here I had some surprisingly good views of the nebulae regions through my Tak FC-100DL, 31mm Nagler & UHC filter!

[Stardaze]

Awesome, definitely envious of this session! Sounds picture perfect with the dob challenge at zenith worth the effort. 

[wookie1965]

Great report glad you had a good night I myself didn't seeing was awful so it's nice to read this report. 

Thanks for posting. 

[PrairieStarGazer]

Great report. That subject title alone had me (51 degrees north!) salivating!

[Epick Crom]

Thanks, Sagittarius directly overhead is a sight to behold, it leave no doubt about the shape of our galaxy!