Telescope Reviews: Great Night 8/8/08

Good weather and seeing are rare in Ohio during the summer but last night was as perfect as the best January evening. I went out at around 10:15 and was amazed to see more stars shining brighter than I've ever seen them during the summer. It was even more surprising after the iffy weather until late that evening.

I collimated the scope and then just sat down and drank everything in with binoculars. After letting my eyes adjust a bit I set the scope on M71, and it was an incredibly easy find, looking like a nebulous patch with a grainy texture and a few pinpoint stars over top of it. Next up was M57 because I wanted to see just how good the seeing was and it blew me away: the nebula's tissue paper structure was strikingly apparent, with two ovals, one slightly brighter than the other. The central star was nowhere to be found. Then around 11:00 I took a quick look at M31 and M32 and was once again amazed at their brightness. M31 had a hint of a disk stretching beyond my FOV and the core was breathtaking. M110 wasn't as obvious and I didn't bother to find it.

For the first new object of the night I found NGC 7789, which was beautiful. Several bright stars over top of a grainy background which with higher magnification resolved nicely into dozens more stars. This great cluster got me in the mood to see some others so I headed over to Ophiuchus to find IC 4665 and NGC 6633. 4665 was as always very sparse but bright, and 6633 was a real treat like I remembered, composed of several knots and strings of bright colorful stars with a faint hazy background. I searched for NGC 6426 and was unable to find it for the third time; would have found M14 but it was behind a tree.

One of my favorite objects of the night was NGC 7331, and this was my third time seeing it and it still surprised me with its shape. It was bright and handled magnification very well and showed some NW to SE elongation with averted vision. I searched for Stephan's Quintet and the other members of the 7331 group but couldn't find them.

The next new object was NGC 7619/7626 because I was in the neighborhood already. They were extremely faint and required about 200x just to see them, and even then only consisted of one or two dim smears with averted vision. Still fun to see something new. Then I noticed M34, one of the objects I've been wanting to see, was high enough to see, so I checked it out. Not a very large or impressive cluster but it was still nice to look at. Then I found Kemble's Cascade for the first time (through some leaves). It was excellent but would have been better with a clear view.

By now it was about 1:00 AM so I thought it was time for something different and found NGC 7662, the Blue Snowball. It was bigger than the first time I'd seen it, or seemed to be. It showed a bright blue-white color and was almost perfectly round. Then I turned the scope on Cepheus and found (maybe) Krueger 60 and definitely NGC 7235, which I have in my log as "small and indistinct." At 1:35 I found NGC 6543: bright, easy, hint of turquoise-green color and almost round.

At this point a noise startled me and when I looked up there was a white cat or small dog in the brush about 25' away so I scared it off and decided it was time to grab the flashlight because my red astronomy light wouldn't cut it if I needed to see into the dark. I stayed inside for about a half hour and let the feeling come back to my hands (Reynaud's syndrome), and when coming back out was startled by the sight of M45. It was so big and bright it made me jump a little bit and then I realized what it was. I took a quick look and could see five stars in the cluster with non-adapted direct vision. Through the scope it was even better. It was probably due to moisture but I could swear I spotted a bit of nebulosity with my naked eye with averted vision. I'm not used to the winter constellations and got all turned around, and after 30 minutes of trying to find my way over to M1 I gave in and went to bed.

I also saw an unidentified cluster in Cass, which I think might have been M52; it was small and compact and apparent only with a bit of magnification, not in my finder scope. Three satellites and one meteor also.

This night turned out to be the best one I've had in months and it was worth dragging my stuff out for.

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Mike
71 Messiers
155 total DSOs
6 planets