We had excellent weather with clear transparent sky on Saturday, September 10th. A cloud bank over the ocean in the west was slowly approaching, but it was still clear at 10:30 pm, and therefore I went for an observing session. Arriving at my dark site I found the eastern sky partially blocked by semi-transparent clouds, and the northern sky was illuminated by auroral glow. In the south-west, however, the sky was dark and clear, and the temperature was pleasant, about +8 Centigrade.
This was one of my rare opportunities to observe some of the summer objects familiar to most of you, but very exotic to me. First target was M16 which I saw first time one year ago. The cluster itself is rather coarse, but the nebulous glow was obvious at first glance. With the O-III filter and 63x magnification, the nebula was very prominent, and the obscuring "fingers" could easily be seen. Last year I didn't notice them.
The way down to M17 was short. This nebula is very bright and detailed, but also with hints of fainter nebulosity outside the "swan" pattern (reminds me more of a duck, though). Great object!
Of course, I also observed M11, and afterwards turned to the nearby globular, NGC6712. Many stars were visible in this cluster superimposed on an unresolved glow. In the same field as the cluster the planetary, IC1295 could be seen. Without the O-III filter it was very faint, but with the filter the difference in brightness between the cluster and the nebula was very small. Of course, the nebula was considerably dimmed by the filter. To me the nebula appeared only slightly smaller than the cluster. Fine pair of objects, unfortunately very low in the sky from my location.
I observed many other objects this evening, both clusters, nebulae and double stars. I'll tell about the doubles in a separate post, and just mention one more of the DSO's, the open cluster, NGC6791 in Lyra. This cluster is extremely rich to be an open cluster, containing several hundred stars. First time I observed it I used 8 inches of aperture. It was then visible as a faint glow, rather large in extent (perhaps 15') but no stars were visible. With the 12.5-inch I'm still not sure that I can see any of the cluster's stars. There are some small stellar points superimposed on the glow, but these may as well be foreground stars. It woud be interesting to hear if anyone have observed it with larger aperture, or succeeded in resolving the cluster with a smaller scope. It is easy to locate, very near the wide double, Eta Lyrae.
Inge S
This was one of my rare opportunities to observe some of the summer objects familiar to most of you, but very exotic to me. First target was M16 which I saw first time one year ago. The cluster itself is rather coarse, but the nebulous glow was obvious at first glance. With the O-III filter and 63x magnification, the nebula was very prominent, and the obscuring "fingers" could easily be seen. Last year I didn't notice them.
The way down to M17 was short. This nebula is very bright and detailed, but also with hints of fainter nebulosity outside the "swan" pattern (reminds me more of a duck, though). Great object!
Of course, I also observed M11, and afterwards turned to the nearby globular, NGC6712. Many stars were visible in this cluster superimposed on an unresolved glow. In the same field as the cluster the planetary, IC1295 could be seen. Without the O-III filter it was very faint, but with the filter the difference in brightness between the cluster and the nebula was very small. Of course, the nebula was considerably dimmed by the filter. To me the nebula appeared only slightly smaller than the cluster. Fine pair of objects, unfortunately very low in the sky from my location.
I observed many other objects this evening, both clusters, nebulae and double stars. I'll tell about the doubles in a separate post, and just mention one more of the DSO's, the open cluster, NGC6791 in Lyra. This cluster is extremely rich to be an open cluster, containing several hundred stars. First time I observed it I used 8 inches of aperture. It was then visible as a faint glow, rather large in extent (perhaps 15') but no stars were visible. With the 12.5-inch I'm still not sure that I can see any of the cluster's stars. There are some small stellar points superimposed on the glow, but these may as well be foreground stars. It woud be interesting to hear if anyone have observed it with larger aperture, or succeeded in resolving the cluster with a smaller scope. It is easy to locate, very near the wide double, Eta Lyrae.
Inge S
