Planetary in the murk

[Nyctimene]

During the last evenings, the sky got increasingly worse with high cirrus clouds and haze, putting down the NELM to 5.0 or even 4.8 (UMi). What to do to make good use of these otherwise very warm and balmy late summer nights? Go to objects with a high surface brightness - for a DSO observer, planetary nebulas are nice targets; and Aquila, close to the meridian, shows some of them. With the 18", 12" and 5.1" scopes, I visited the  "Glowing Eye" nebula from the 21. to 23.8. The 11 mag round, (with 18" slightly darker in the middle), nebula was easy to find at the outer curvature of the "Sickle", that leads to M 11.  No further details could be made out. I forgot to take out the O III filter, so I could not see the 13mag central star. Even with the smallest scope, the Heritage 130 P, the nebula was easily visible.  Close by is the wonderful star V Aql, shining bright in deep orange.

Yesterday evening the sky was mostly cloudy. But I was determined to make my way to another planetary NGC 6818, the "Little Gem Nebula" in Sagittarius. With the 12" and the 30mmf/77° Wild Heerbrugg, giving a TFoV of 1,5° (!), I started from the just visible Beta 1 Capricorni. With the wonderful tool SkySafari, I star-hopped through clouds and haze, feeling like a sailor navigating a boat in the fog looking for lighthouses and sea marks, for about ten minutes. All went well, and I arrived at the nebula, which could be seen with 50x mag easily as a round uniformly bright disc. The O III filter blink confirmed the planetary's identity. Switching to the 18 mmf/82° revealed no further details. Now the clouds were thickening rapidly; but I was content having found the nebula for an additional reason. It's in the same field of view with the famous Barnard's Galaxy 6822 just S of the nebula - a tricky target, despite 8.7 mag, due to it's very low surface brightness of only 14.8 mag. I will have to wait for clearer skies to spot this Dwarf Galaxy (the brightest of the Local Group). Two rewarding targets! After 90 mins, I finished the observation with short looks at the Veil, M31 with 32 and 110, and M 81/82.

Thanks for reading

Stephan

Edited August 25, 2022 by Nyctimene

[domstar]

Great report. Yes, Barnard's Galaxy is a killer- at least for me. I've spent many a time staring at where it should be. I saw it for the first time this August after a many unsuccessful tries. I should go back and have a closer look at the Little Gem. I'm not very experienced with Planetary Nebulae.

[Kon]

Great report and several targets that I have not seen before. Thanks for the description. I have added them on my to see list.

[Nyctimene]

Added a nice pair of Aquila planetaries to the list yesterday evening, NGC 6803 and 6804. They have, of course, no physical relationship, but are only one degree optically distant from each other. With the 18", equipped with the 30 mmf/77°, I started  under 5.0 NELM skies from Gamma Aquilae and worked my way four degrees to the west, exactly the finder's field of view. But the star hop was not easy in the dense Milky Way star fields, and I needed fifteen minutes to arrive at the first one, the larger (35") 12.0 mag 6803. It was visible immediately, even without filter, as an almost round, slightly W-E elongated uniform disc, with three embedded stars NE flashing up (the westernmost probably the 14 mag central star). Adding the OIII filter and increasing the mag to 164x (Docter 12.5 mmf) made the stars invisible, and showed the elongated form more clearly, along with a somewhat irregular inner structure. 328x gave no additional details. Following an arc of stars to the N, I found the brighter (11.4), but considerably smaller 6804 as a bright, tiny disc (6"!) by using the OIII filter blink (moving the handheld filter between eyepiece and eye in and out of the light path). It remained bright and tiny at 68x, the central star (14 mag) disappearing in the light, even with higher mags (328x). The two are listed as No. 57/58 in Phil Harrington's book: "Cosmic Challenge" with medium difficulty level for 3" to 5" scopes, so give it a try.

I finished with Saturn, which showed the Cassini division quite well; four moons (Rhea, Japetus, Dione, Titan) visible. Ended after 90 mins at 23.15 CEST.

Thanks for reading

Stephan