Saturday night I was up at Fiddletown with Rashad, Ken Head and Steve Gottlieb. The conditions were perfect with steady seeing (78 UMA easlily split at 172x) dark skys (mag 6.5) and only a hint of dew in the wee hours of the morning. We started the night with an observation of a bright iridium flash at 8:53 and ended it at 4:00 in the morning with an "on the ground" first sighting (for us, anyway) of the next bright comet - S4 Linear - just a starlike core in the predawn backlit by a waning moon.
I'd come up to finish the last 9 objects on my Herschel II list of 400 objects. The last one was a globular cluster - Palomar 9 in Sgr. Steve and I spent considerable time looking at this one and two other interesting globular clusters - Djorgovski 2 and Djorgovksi 3 also in Sgr. These two are very close to the beautiful open cluster NGC 6520. The DJ globlulars and Palomars 8 and 9 are recently reviewed in the new journal The Deep Sky by Crute. Steve also has an article coming out on the Palomar globulars in the August issue of Sky and Tel. Steve sent me copies of his observations on Pal 9 and DJ's 2 and 3 and they are so good I've taken the liberty of including them here for other interested observers.
Dennis Beckley
Palomar 9 = NGC 6717
17.5": very unusual small, faint glow located 2' south of mag 5 Nu 2 Sagitarii! The very faint background glow is ~1' diameter but more notable are several superimposed stars. A close pair of mag 13.5 stars is at the NE edge 25" from center (this is IC 4802!) and a similar star is at the WNW edge 20" from center. There is a very small bright core which on closer inspection appears to be a close pair of mag 12.5 stars or possibly a bright stellar core and nearby star. Other than the central "knot", the unconcentrated 1' background patch has a low surface brightness and is much smaller than the listed diameter of 4'.
13": fairly faint, very small. This globular appears as a hazy patch easily visible just 1.8' south of Nu 2 = 35 Sagitarii (V = 5.0)! About half a dozen stars are either superimposed or resolved including two close pairs.
Djorgovski 3 = NGC 6540
17.5": this interesting globular is located nearly midway along a short 1.5' arc of a half dozen or so mag 13-14 stars which are bowed out to the north. The globular is a faint, round, 40" glow which is embedded just inside the center of this string which extends beyond the globular to the west and east. At 100x, this string, along with the haze of the cluster creates the impression the globular is quite elongated.
13": very faint, small, rich spot, slightly elongated E-W, mottled but no resolved. Also a group of six faint stars in an arc to the SE. The dark nebula B86 lies 41' W. Recently reclassified as a globular in 1994.
Djorgovski 2 = ESO 456-SC38
17.5": this recently discovered globular was easily picked up at 140x as a faint, oval glow ~1.5'x1.1' with no hint of resolution other than one or two faint stars glimpsed at the edges. Located 3.2' N of mag 9 SAO 186130 and 21' WNW of NGC 6520/B86! The rich milky way background is quite prominent in the field except in the vicinity of the globular which appears to be nestled in a darker "hole" defined by brighter stars. At 220-280x, it appears oriented SW-NE and stands out well with averted vision with a fairly sharp outline but appears more like a faint patch of nebulosity than a globular. A few mag 15+ field stars are visible at the edges - the easiest at the SW end and a second star at the NE edge. One of two other threshold stars are superimposed. The globular is sandwiched between the mag 9 star to the south, a close double star 2.5' SSW and two mag 10 stars bracket the cluster on the west and east sides. Initially classified as an open cluster in the ESO.