Three more globular clusters: M5, M10 and M12

[omega3]

It was a beautiful clear night last night. When I first got out at 10.30 pm I could still see the notilucent clouds in the north, but clearly not at its best. My first sighting of these!!

Using my binoculars, star hopped from Arcturus to 5 Serpens to find M5. Probably better to start star hopping from Yed Prior in Ophiuchus. Again the clusters was a fuzzy patch with a few individual stars visible scattered over the patch. But what was lovely was the nearby 5 Serpens which is a double at mag 10 and 5. Because of the widely different magnitudes, it made for a lovely sight.

Also managed to see M10 and M12 in Ophiuchus, M12 being more diffused. I tried a few times but could not see M107. My mag 3 skies and M107 being still fairly low down probably accounts for my failure.

The starfields around Cygnus were absolutely stunning last night. Also saw M39 and M29 ( a small cluster of stars).

Alan

[DarkerSky]

Nice one Alan. You did really well to pick out those globs in a mag 3 sky with bins. Well done.

M14 is nearby too...about a magnitude fainter than M10 and M12...might be worth a shot next time?

M107 is a tough object. A much tighter and slightly brighter glob is M9

[omega3]

Sorry I have given the wrong impression that I saw the globulars with bins. I used the bins to star hop to find roughly where the globs are, I then move the dob till the laser points to the position found with the bins. I usually observe where the laser points through the bins. I then fine adjust the position through my 50mm finderscope, and the glob will be in the eyepiece. The description of what I observe is through the dob. Some of the globs are visible through the bins and the finderscope (RACI) but I have not taken note of the ones that are.

Would be interested to know how others find objects manually with dobs.

The next time I am out I will try to look for M14 and M9.

Alan

[Mark at Beaufort]

Alan well done on finding these globs. I also use a 10" Dob and have a RDF and a right angle 9x50 correct image finder fitted to enable star hopping.

Before my evening session I choose the objects that I wish to observe and make a map reference against my Pocket atlas and the Uranometria star atlas. I have an overlay for different FOV - 1 degree/2 and 3 etc. I pick a main star and cross reference the star atlas with the overlay in place. This is reasonably successful.

In the case of very faint DSOs - some in the Herschel 400 list for example then I might print a special map from starry night pro 5 software taking stars down to 13-15 mag and use that as a cross reference.

Good luck with M107.

Mark

[Llamanaut]

Well played with these objects Alan. My usual method for finding objects with my dob is to use geometric angles and patterns. For instance the ring nebula M57 in lyra is roughly halfway and just a tad outside a line drawn between beta and gamma lyrae. I have a set of constellation diagrams which ive drawn pencil lines on to indicate angle and distance of the messiers... i use a telrad to put the dob in the right sort of area then fine tune if necessary with the finderscope. Usually (not always though) im bang on target. Recently using this method i bagged 56 messiers in a three hour period, it certainly works for me