Telescope Reviews: Messier List Completed

Date: July 2, 2003; 11:45pm – 12:30am PDT
Location: Redmond, Washington
Seeing: Steady
Temp: +9C
Scope: 12.5” Discovery PDHQ f/5
Limiting Mag: ~4.5

That’s it, I finished my Messier list last night by bagging M6, M7, M69, and M70. I observed these from a local park with an unobstructed southern view. Light domes loomed to my west (Seattle) and north (Everett). To the south was slightly better, but still only LM 3.5 near the horizon. Ya gotta play the cards you’re dealt, I guess.

11:45 – M7: I actually saw this a few nights earlier from a friend’s cabin with my 12x60 binoculars. Skies were very much friendlier there, and the binoculars showed an incredible, almost globular, array of stars. Binoculars are definitely the best way to enjoy this cluster. In my telescope at 66x (24mm Panoptic, 1° field), it loses much of its beauty. It becomes much coarser, and is too big to fit in the field of view. I tried to detect individual colours, but it was too low on the horizon.

11:55 – M6 (Butterfly Cluster): Again, I viewed this in binoculars a few nights earlier in binoculars and darker skies. Under those conditions the object was very bright and definitely “bent” rectangular shaped. The bright red star BM Sco was very prominent. Tonight the binocular view was diminished by the light pollution, but the telescope view at 66x was quite enjoyable. It was moderately rich in bright stars, and I definitely noted the butterfly shape; its wings extended NE-SW, and the antenna extended SE. Tonight however, BM Sco was not very prominent, and neither was V862.

12:10 – M70: This globular was very low on the horizon, and was also very small. At 227x (7mm Nagler) its appearance was definitely globular, with a strong central concentration fading smoothly to the edges. No resolution was achieved.

12:20 – M69: This globular was also low on the horizon. It was much larger than M70, but not as strongly condensed toward the core. I was able to achieve a very slight bit of resolution at the edges only.

For the record I counted M102 as NGC 5866 and M110 as NGC 205. Some prefer to exclude these from the official Messier List.

Clear skies, everyone.

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Tak Sky 90, Tak EM200, STL-4020M