Midnight walk

[Tantalus]

9-10th July,2010

16x60 bins

With a clear sky and balmy temperatures last night, I decided to go for a walk with my bins in a nearby field. I love these hot summer nights - you can stand and observe for as long as you fancy without freezing any of your bits off!

Started off with M31 - not at its' best yet but I can never resist a peek. I also tried for M33 but so far it continues to elude me. Then the double cluster, which to my eyes didn't look that well defined tonight, maybe not dark enough yet. This particular field is not very dark but it's a lot darker than my back yard and has a clear wide horizon in the East and South, and I could just make out the Milky Way stretching from Cassiopea, overhead and all the way down almost to the southern horizon.

I've been wanting to have a good look at the Sagittarius region, so starting from Altair I moved down through Aquila to the Wild duck cluster, and scanned the southern reaches of the Milky Way. My gaze was drawn on by a number of star chains, one which took me towards IC4665, a nice mag 4.2 open cluster just above Cebalrai (beta Oph) and another chain that took me down towards Sagittarius. I was surprised by how many fuzzies I could see with binoculars so low down in the sky. I didn't have any charts with me so I couldn't identify them all, but I checked with Stellarium when I got home and I can definitely Identify a few... M8 - The Lagoon nebula which through the bins it appeared as three distinctive stars in a row surrounded by a patch of nebulosity. I also caught M21 close by, and as I observed M20, The Trifid nebula, a small meteor passed right through my FOV. T'rific!

As I reluctantly made my way home I caught a satellite flare close to Polaris at 01:12, before coming into the glare of street lights. Next chance I get I'm gonna bring my scope down here and have a proper look through this region, which I can't see it from my house. And it'll help me boost my meagre tally of Messier objects.

[Abell76]

Hiya,

very nice report of your sightings there, thank you for sharing

I´m a bit surprised you didn´t see M33. You seem to live further north than me (50°)

or got stricken by the denser atmosphere near the horizon ?

Try "Barnard´s E" in AQL and the "veil nebula" in CYG next time you get a transparent night. My summer favs:glasses1:

cheers

Abell

[Tantalus]

Thanks Abell. I did see quite a few objects, but without a star chart I coundn't identify most of 'em. And yes, I'm at Lat 53.5 deg.

I've never heard of Barnard's E, I'll have to look that one up (Could be a while though, cloud city up here at the mo). Thanks for the tip...

[Abell76]

Hi again,

E Nebula - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Enjoy

Cheers

Abell

[pluton]

Hello,

Last night,  and from a rural environment with light pollution and using Canon 12X36 IS binoculars I could not see this dark nebula, the night was calm and with good transparency, I moved about two miles away from where I observed, something far from the light pollution (although still close to it) and I could appreciate in a very subtle way the structure, image of the nebula, then I continued walking in the night, leaving me another 2 or 3 miles from the sources of light, the Milky Way began to be spectacular, I pointed to Tarazed and - OHH !! What a beautiful nebula ..
moral: do not change your binoculars, change your sky (if you can ..)
best regards
Paul