by Jamie Dillon
Last night while some of our more esteemed colleagues were south and west of Antananarivo, and Natscher was up on the Peak, Felix and I were in the backyard waiting for the skyglow to die down. By midnight the sky had improved to right around 4.5 limiting magnitude (measured scientifically with the HB BM mag charts for Hercules, which was near zenith) with seeing 3/5, moderate.
Mars never stopped boiling, was moving like a fried egg when it hits the skillet and you figure out you've really got the pan too hot. Still wanted Jo to see Mars close to maximum, she got to see the South Pole and the dark area around Tyrrhenus, and she stuck around to gaze at M13 at 126x. Last night I'd been going back to the Backyard Astronomer's Guide, which I'd read word for word 2.5 yrs ago. Dickinson's section on exploring the deepsky has all kinds of favorites written, at a range of levels of difficulty, which of course I only understood in the abstract while we were still shopping for scopes. Makes special mention of 4216, which I just saw for the first time at Coe last Saturday. He even has tips for peeking at the brighter members of the most prominent Abell clusters.
So midnight or no, the old dysphotonia kicked in nicely, and I went off to study some globulars. M10 and M12 in Ophiuchus had been getting along without me since last fall. Favorites of Nilesh, and I sure know why. They both have complex, fascinating shapes. Then over to stare at M13 some more, then to M92 where I stopped and visited for a good long while. As I watched I started to make out a spiralling toward the core. Mmm. Then the main event, finding the 3rd main globular in Hercules, NGC 6229. My first visit there. Designed to be an easy hop, just 1.5 deg due north of 52 Her, a 4.8 mag star. 52 Her wasn't near naked eye in our sky last night, but not torture to find. 6229 is compact and bright. With averted vision saw more and more granularity, and some structure at the core.
Our skies in town haven't been great, so 6229 was my first new object in the backyard in a while. Fun. For a nightcap I found myself spending time with M57 again. This spring and summer I seem to have made a new friend in the Ring Nebula, keep going back there.
(Felix is a Celestron 11" f/4.5 Dobs with a primary made by Discovery. Last night was using a 22 Pan, 10mm and 6mm Radians and a TV 2x Barlow.) Oh yeah and at 420x with the 6mm Barlowed, I got nu Sco to split. Learned from TAC this month that it would (from rnapo, as I remember). Looks good.
Two days to LSA and 27 days to Lassen for us. Yessss.