Poking around in Scorpius, Ophiuchus and Sagittarius
By Matthew Buynoski

Last night the TAC had an in-town star party. The seeing was decent although the sky was pretty bright early on (quarter moon and city lights). We did get to see hints of the Aquila-Sagittarius part of the Milky Way later on about midnight. The evening was warm--you almost didn't need a jacket unless the gentle wind came up, as it did from time to time--and there was no dew at all. No clouds, either, except a few far off to the west which contributed a brilliant red-and-gold sunset to the occasion.

I had a new, correct-image finderscope (from Tuthill) to try out. I found that it really helped my starhopping; everything seemed more natural when going from A to B when the finder image matched the sky instead of being inverted.

Started off before twilight was over with several good looks at the moon. The Alpine valley and the Straight Wall (Rupes Recta) were near the terminator and showed very well. I had one visitor (this was a public star party) and after some moon views, found M81 and M82 for her to see some galaxies.

Next was the "great globular hunt"; the Scorpio-Ophiuchus area is loaded with them: M4 of course, M80, then on to a veritable swarm of them in southern Ophiuchus: M19, M62, NGC6284, NGC6293, NGC6316 plus others I didn't look at. Around M19 there is a neat asterism as well: three almost equally spaced star-pairs (Burnham doesn't have them in the list of real doubles) looking for all the world like a little rope ladder strung across the sky. Sated on globulars, I went on to hunt down the Bug Nebula, a planetary. It was there, and rather elongated in shape for a planetary, but the "bug" aspect was sort of washed out in the bright sky background. Starhopped via the Lambda-Nu pair of stars to M7, a really beautiful open cluster. Spent some time finding H18, a much smaller cluster on the fringes of M7. There is supposed to be a globular just opposite to H18, also on the fringes of M7 (NGC6453) but I could not pin it down, nor the unnamed (on Sky Atlas 2000, anyway) planetary in M7. Drifted up to M6, another sparkly open cluster. This one has four other open clusters (much smaller) within about 2 degrees of it. Found one of these (NGC6416, I think), but could not find the others; there were mobs of stars everywhere you looked and I suspect I wasn't picking them out from this pretty dense area of the Milky Way very well. Drifted NW, still hunting for more of the many open clusters noted on the star chart (and not finding them) until I arrived at M8. The nebulosity was shy with the fairly bright sky, but the embedded cluster was a treat for the eyes. The nearby Trifid nebula was also coy, basically showing as a fuzziness around the fairly bright star in it; no hint of the three dark lanes. Nearby cluster M21 was putting on a nice show, though.

Pause for reflection....I had starhopped from around Antares all the way over to M21, easily my longest trek without getting lost! Hopping around is really starting to feel comfortable. I like poking around leisurely and twiddling the knobs (there are no motors on my scope). To me, it seems in tune with the magnificent slow wheeling of the heavens overhead (I fuss with picoseconds all day since I make my living working with high-speed CMOS logic, so a slower time scale is a great relief).

The evening was wearing on, but there was an interesting challenge...find M51 in Bill's Pronto. Akkana centered M51, but I must admit I could see nothing. We used the 8" to verify the star field (M51 showed as two fuzzy spots...no real detail). The other two could see it in the smaller scope, but I saw only blank space. Ah, the curse of substandard eyes, which, by this time, were getting a bit worn out. I can only observe for about 3-4 hours before eyestrain sets in, so it was time to quit.