Planetary nebulae and some stars in the bright June sky

[rojay]

June 13th, using an 8 inch Dob.

My observation planning was rather old -school: I browsed Norton's to see what was around. The description of NGC6210 gave reason to hope that it would be visible against the bright sky.  Finding it was a bit more modern, using Sky Safari to plan the star hop. Found it ok at low magnification: it didn't look extended, but formed one corner of a triangle as per the view on my phone, and it didn't get fainter when I put in a UHC filter, unlike the two companions. At high magnification (about 160x with a 7.5 mm eyepiece) I could tell it wasn't uniform, and noticed a couple of faint spots, one either side of the main blob. I'd not looked at pictures of the object at this stage, so it was cool to get confirmation afterwards. What was also great was that my equatorial platform was working, so I could fiddle about with Barlows and filters and still find the object where I'd left it! (using the Barlow didn't really improve the view, BTW). 

I didn't want to push my luck with fainter fuzzies, so my next target was Delta Lyr, easy to find (you start from Vega!), and I remembered it as being a nice field. Sure enough, great colour contrast between the two Delta components, and surrounded by a little open cluster. 

At which point I was in the neighbourhood, so it felt rude not to visit the Ring Nebula. Located easily enough, and then the UHC filter definitely helped with contrast.
By that point it was quite late enough for a work night, so I stopped there.

Thanks for reading!

[westmarch]

I’m interested in your use of a UHC filter, I have been using an Astronomic filter on Bortle 4 skies and admit to being somewhat underwhelmed with it on emission nebulae.  Which one do you have?

John

[rojay]

Hi, I have the Astronomik UHC. It's not a magic bullet certainly, but it does darken the sky and helps with low surface brightness nebulae.

[bosun21]

On 14/06/2022 at 21:12, westmarch said:

I’m interested in your use of a UHC filter, I have been using an Astronomic filter on Bortle 4 skies and admit to being somewhat underwhelmed with it on emission nebulae.  Which one do you have?

John

Try the Astronomik OIII filter!

[Guest]

I will second the use of a OIII filter.  So far i have run broadband, narrowband and the OIII and the OIII, at this point seems to be doing the best.