Telescope Reviews: Re: New scope and starting the Messier club

Well gang...hello again, several days have past since last I posted......work, family , holdays etc kept me running and tired.
But tonight the clear sky clock called for better than average skys and I was ready.

location.....my old home stead where I grew up in the country.My brother bought it , and says I can use it any time I want.

Scorpius was my jumping off point tonight.M4 was first on my list as I knew it by heart and pretty much just eye balled the scope onto it.M4 is the largest and easiest to find of the three globulars.
Back to Antares and keep going more or less in a straight line until Im in the area and.......... after a little sweeping M19 pops into view.The second largest of the three globulars, bright easy to see and once found ,I found it could be seen in the 50mm finder as a small hazy ball,Shift down one telrad ring and M89 popped into view easy to see, but I thought not quite totally round? or maybe slight elongated , I dont know, lol. Ok back over to M4, The "YRMM" shows M80 as a second telrad ring on top of the first, with the first ring having M4 centered in it,get the second telrad ring stacked approximately on top of the first look in the ep, nothing.Ok not totally surprising, begin sweeping ,nothing, ok start over restack the rings with the M80 ring slightly more left than before, switch to the ep, still nothing, start sweeping again , I ran right over it and backed up .
I got it , wow its way smaller than the other two, but it is fairly bright, wonder how I missed this on my first sweep attempt.Some granulation but mosly just ball like, I can understand why Messier would add this to a comet list.

Ok a break from the M list to look for the false comet.This object was covered in another thread here on Cloudy nights.This is very cool , though I had to go into the murky part of the sky to see it.
Lots of haze tonight and dew was running off everything.So I took a coffee break and layed the scope and telrad up on the dash with the heater going to warm things up a mite while I had a cup of coffee.After about 10 minutes all the dew was gone from the telrad and finder and main lens and I was back at it.Ok now for the easy goodys M6 and M7.
M6 is also known as the butterfly cluster, now Ill admit I often have a hard time seeing why things are called what they are, but on this open cluster it was really to see why its called the butterfly cluster, it looks a lot like a butterfly.
Shift down and slight left and M7 popped into view oh wow, now the 28mm ortho wasnt doing this cluster justice, so I made a switch to a 2inch super view wide angle 32mm ep, and wow does this cluster pop.Im sure I was seeing well over 100 stars direct vision, way coool.

Ok folks it eye candy time ......over to Sagittarius.
Leaving the 32mm 2inch super view in.....the entire region is simply gorgeous.Using the telrad and the "YRMM" book, I found M24 first, NGC6603 was visible within the "star cloud" ok shift slightly left and down ever so slightly and M25 pops into view, across to the right and up slightly and after a few seconds M23 pops into view.I really should have upped the power slightly ,but have to admit I was charmed bye the low power FOVs .
Down somewhat and looking in the 50mm finder to find M8 , it was really easy in the finder and in the ep it was wow.The stars actually embedded in the cluster give it a really wow look.I also noted the dark lane but didnt really think to much of it until this morning while typing this report and rereading Sue Frenches book "celestial sampler" and it is like duh, of course I knew that it was called the lagoon nebula because of that lane in it.Sure I did really.
Up slightly and we find M20 the trifid nebula.Its haze was unmistakable, the three "lobes" if you will were not visible, the dew was winning the battle.
Another 10 minute "coffee" break to dry everything was in order.
Ok back at it.I really wanted to nail down M21 so I recentered the lagoon in the finder and then swept upwards sweeping gently side to side until the trifid came into view, then I simply nudged the scope left and up a hair till it popped into view, almost seemed attached at the hip to M20.
As I was getting tired and honestly was tired of balancing on a stepstool when the scope was this low in the sky, I decided to test the 32mm super view, bye "scanning" the milky way which bye midnight was popping out of the sky.I mean all I can say is wow, Im sure I stumbled over several Ms but I could not identify any of them,lol.The f/8 optics , with a 32mm super view wide angle 2 inch ep were almost richfield like.The Cygnus region was stunning and I did slow down there in case the veil, which Ive never found on my own,decided to pop in to view.I did see it once at the black forest star party in a 80mm ST refractor.
I then continued downward towards Sagittarius.The scutum star cloud was just wow, the dark lanes running through the milkyway were like roads for me to follow.
Remember the murk I refered to earlier it was a fog bank, and it chose this time to roll over me and my equipment.
I packed it in satisfied ,books were soggy, scope had water running off it, table had dew running off when I folded it up.
All in all a very good night. Clear skys all, and thanks for reading

next project home made dew zappers...lol

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andy

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