by Dave Staples
| Observer | Dave Staples |
|---|---|
| Date | 20 June 2001 |
| Time | 2200-0100 PDT |
| Location | Lake Sonoma CA, 38°43'N 123°02'W Elev ~1100 (Lone Rock Flat) |
| Weather | 15-20°C Temp ~30% Humidity |
| Equipment | 8" F6 Dob, Telrad + 7x50 finder scope, Pentax XL EPs |
| Seeing | 7/10 breezy |
| Trans | 9/10 |
Like Robert it has been a bit since I've done any serious deepsky observing, Mars has occupied me lately. Unlike Robert, I don't do much midweek observing. However, I just happen to have started a 6 week sabbatical from work <g>, so I was able to sleep in the next morning. I decided that I would spend some time hunting down objects that I have had trouble with in my backyard.
Since I'm still pretty new at this, I'm still hunting down all of Mr Messier's bright fuzzies (with a few others thrown in here and there). So without further ado.
| M12 and M10 | These 2 have been giving me fits at home. Though I knew generally where they should be I had no luck at home. All that changed under dark skies. Just a few minutes of fumbling around and BAM! there's M12, a line of stars on the outskirts of downtown starsville made it seem kind of flat on one side and lop sided (great technical descriptions <g>) M10 seems larger and more spread out than M12 to me. |
|---|---|
| M107 | Man this one is tiny, I don't think I could resolve any individual stars, but since I was already in serpens I thought I would stop by. |
| M19 | About 2 deg. east of Mars. Not much different from M107. I can see why Messier included these in his list. |
| M9, NGC6356, NGC6342 | Had fun getting lost here, I wasn't quite sure which was which. Steve G. helped me get it straightened out. M9 was the biggest of the three with NGC6342 just visible in my scope but showing up quite well in Steve's 17.5". |
By now I was getting down into Sagittarius, so I officially chalked up some of the things I had been observing in the backyard without charts.
| M8 | I kept coming back to this. I really like the O.C. imbedded in the nebula...pretty cool, the nebula showed up much better with my broadband LPR filter. |
|---|---|
| M20, M21 | Eye candy, the Trifid and an open cluster close by Mr. Messier was a busy boy here. |
| M7 | More eye candy...I think I've mentioned before, I really like open clusters |
| M6 | Baby brother to M7, nice in it's own right |
| M17 | When I first happened on this in the backyard I thought it was a galaxy (ok, ok, it doesn't really look like a galaxy but I can still claim being a newbie), It's nice to put the correct name to this one. I guess if you stand on your head it does kind of look like a swan (remember I'm using and sct...everything is right side up). |
| M25 | WAHOO! now that's an open cluster, a new favorite next to the Perseus double cluster. |
| NGC6231 | Another naked eye O.C. just west of Scorpius and I guess you can add H12 to this one as well. |
| M23, M24 | It's open cluster night...what more to say. |
Well I close for now. I still have a lot of stuff left of stuff left to see in Sag. man what a place