💾 Archived View for koyu.space › mrael2_obsv › sessions › 2015 › 2015-09-11.gmi captured on 2022-06-03 at 23:25:19. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Date: 2015-09-11
Time: 8:50 PM MDT
Seeing: I
Transparency: 7
Object: M12
Const.: Ophiuchus
At 42x, two stars lie at opposite ends of the consistently cloudy globe. A third star a bit away from the edge forms a triangle with the other two stars, and a still further 4th star creates a nice diamond partially superimposed on the dim globular.
Jumping to 138x, a couple dozen stars are resolved -- mostly around the edges -- with the center still cloudy.
Object: M10
Const.: Ophiuchus
At 138x, M10 is lovely, exhibiting a few more resolved stars than M12. These stars -- and extended arms of the cluster -- remind me of the spiral structure I can sometimes detect in M51.
At 84x, these "arms" are still present, but they are faded and lend an asymmetry to the globular, which is very nice.
Now, at 9:10 PM, the wind is calm, and the temperature could be a very pleasant 18 degrees C.
Object: M14
Const.: Ophiuchus
At 42x, this is a small, fuzzy globular, consistent in brightness from edge to center.
At 138x, the cluster remains dim but takes on more of a scattering of fine dust. No stars are distinctly resolved apart from their appearance as fine dust particles.
Object: M9
Const.: Ophiuchus
At 138x, this globular is small, perhaps slightly smaller than M14 with a similarly fuzzy overall appearance but with more "granularity" to the "sand." Adjacent dark nebula B64 is not apparent at any magnification to my untrained eye.
Object: M107
Const.: Ophiuchus
M107 is small and dim at 84x. At 138x it remains small, dim, and unresolved, but four surrounding stars create a cross or kite shape in which M107 is at the crux of the cross:
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Andromeda Galaxy amazing tonight! Winter coat on at 9:50 PM. Wind calm.
M22 breathtaking at 84x in Sagittarius!
M8 lovely at 84x.
Dark lanes clear in M20 at 138x.
M24 is vast and best seen in the finderscope where it appears to be a large, cloudy grouping of stars.
M23 in Sagittarius is a nice open cluster, sparse, of about 50-100 stars.
Uranus: very small blue disc at 277x!
Neptune: smaller than Uranus at 277x but clearly a round blue disc. September 2015 Sky & Telescope magazine helped.