Tired of the GCs yet? It's all I've got, unless it clears up tonight. The moon should set just before 1AM, so fingers crossed. Transparency is predicted to be rather poor, but seeing shouldn't be too bad.
M9 is another loosely concentrated globular with a Shapley-Sawyer classification of VIII. It does have a significant stellar population of over 250,000, but its distance of 25,500 ly makes it appear rather small.
Observing: 13mm EP with 235x magnification as this one is rather small. AV over time with some blinking consistently showed a barely brighter central region, but it’s offset to the SW (upper left). Small chains of brighter stars kinda frame the core, such as it is, and populate the edges of the halo to the north. A pair of stars just to the SW of the halo were bright enough to be taken as foreground stars. The brighter stars in the halo stand out more due to the core not being very concentrated, I think. The wind calmed a bit so I think seeing held up fairly well. The moon was still over 2 hours from setting and just under 50% illuminated, which may also explain why the outer edges of the halo didn’t extend very far.
Sketching: White powder, white pastel pencil, and white gel pen on Hamilco 80lb. black card stock. Soft pencil for the field and brighter cluster stars, and hard for the outer halo stars. The brightest field and cluster stars got a dot from the gel pen. Used a medium/large brush with barely any powder to establish the extent of the cluster’s halo, then went back with a little more powder on a small to medium round tip brush to build up the brighter area to the upper left. Used the same brush empty to blend and soften any edges.
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Edited by bphaneuf, 05 July 2022 - 04:17 PM.
