by Jamie Dillon
Last night, 7 stars could be counted in that Finnish Bootes Triangle, amounting to a 4.7 sky. Seeing was 3/5, moderate, and Felix and I showed some goodies off to Jo in the backyard.
She saw the Double Double split for the first time, and looked at M13 and M5. She and Liam and I still share the taste of looking at the big stars in the eyepiece; we got a kick out of gazing at Vega and Arcturus. She also revisited the Ring Nebula, as well as my own asterism, around delta Lyrae, just a lovely pyramid shape of close stars in a 75x field or so, with say 40' fov.
I was using an 11" Celestron f/4.5 Dobs, with a 22mm Panoptic, a 17mm Celestron Plossl and a 6mm Radian.
Some delights you might not have gotten to, 3 of them new to me -
Fred Schaaf went on in the June Sky and Telescope about kappa and iota Bootis, in that bunch off the end of the Dipper. They weren't naked eye but traceable in the finder (a new skill, hey, one step at a time). Kappa looked white and clear blue, pretty, with iota in the same 22 Pan field, white and kind of blue-grey.
70 Oph I'd last seen from Cone Peak last fall, where it looked blue-white and yellowish. From here it looked blue-green and copper. Color! Needed 210x to split, with the 6mm.
New was IC 4665, just NE of beta in Ophiuchus. A bright loose open cluster, lovely in the binocs. Looked like a mini-Beehive in a wide field, bright swarming stars. Moving on the Dickinson list.
Stood and gazed at M10 and M12, remembering oohing and aahing at those clusters with Nilesh last summer (14 August if you must know) at the Peak.
For dessert went back and stared at M13 in the 22mm, then rolled over to Albireo. M'lord what a pair of stars, justifiably famous. Splashyyyyy! Then I felt much better, with a good antidote for some rare absurdity in the work week. Much better.
Tonight, Cubbies on the Peak!