Telescope Reviews: NGC 6441

Last night I decided to go out and observe double stars with my Cambridge Double Star Atlas given a past 1qtr. moon. After viewing a few doubles, I decided to observe some of the brighter deep sky objects. Enjoying the open cluster M7, I noticed on the Atlas that NGC 6441 was close by and decided to give it a shot. My backyard is in a white zone and I don't usually go that low in my southern sky as I have a shopping center in that area, but it was a transparent night. Well I was very surprised as there it was in my 4 inch refractor at 56x. A nice round soft glow. As I moved up in magnification, I noticed the 10th mag. star close by and the glow grew. I could not resolve any stars, but with avert vision there appeared to be some mottling.

In any case this was a very unexpected suprise on a night where I really was only going after doubles given the conditions. Doing some further research I learned that this is a very bright globular and it has a planetary hidden within it's boundaries. Has anyone ever seen this planetary and if so, what size scope was used and what were the sky conditions needed to see it

Sam

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Stellarvue 102 f8.75 APO
Super Polaris Mount

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