After many days of dust, clouds and dust plus clouds, the dust cleared yesterday. At 10:00pm the cloud cover was sparse enough to allow some observations. It was going to be a short session so I grabbed my old Sears 60mm f/11 tripod and all. It was set up in less than a minute. When I looked at the sky, it reminded me of my first summer with this telescope back in 66. I took the original 15mm H, 4mm SR eyepieces and added a 6mm H, 9mm H and 22mm K. Then I went after old friends and observed the following:
NGC 6441- This was the first NGC I ever observed. On my first try there was a bit of haze over the Scorpion sting and the small globular was not observed. A bit later the area was crystal clear and it was there right besides G Scorpii in the 22mm K FOV. It came out well using the original 15mm H. Just a small fuzzy ball.
M7- This one was spectacular with the 22mm K. The cluster occupied most of the FOV.
M6- Not as rich as M7 but excellent with the parallelogram asterism around it's center.
M22- Easily found using the 22mm K. It was a big and bright fuzz ball with two dim stars on its side.
M4- I was surprised to observe M4 so easily with this scope under my current light pollution conditions. It was dim but right there in the center of the FOB
M80- This globular is bright but small and sometimes escapes detection in a small scope. This time I pointed at the approximate position with the finder and caught it right there in the 22mm K FOV. The 15mm H showed the globular a bit better.
Epsilon Lyrae- To split this double required the use of the 9mm H and 6mm H. The 6mm H gave the best views of the double-double. I tried the original 4mm SR and you could see the double but the chromatic aberration of this eyepiece killed the view.
Albireo - Cygnus was already high and this double delivered a great view with the 22mm K and 15mm H. The orange-blue color contrast was great.
M57- The ring nebula was dim but well observed on the 22mm K. My first view of the nebula was with the 15mm H so I tried it. It was dimmer than I remember but back then the skies were so much darker.
I had been cloud dodging for about an hour now and a thick haze began to develop from the south east. It was everywhere in a few minutes. I waited a while but the haze just thickened further, the breeze died down and it was really hot and humid. It was time to quit. I took the whole scope in one hand, the observing chair in the other and everything came in together. No observing table or charts today. Just the telescope, the old eyepieces and ,the not so young now, me.
In the image the telescope was pointing at NGC 6441. The focuser is a replacement. The original broke down years ago.
