Well, it’s been a full month since I last got out with a telescope thanks to the weather, which has been on the wrong side of depressingly atrocious for all of the last four weeks. Despite feeling fairly tired therefore, I was determined to make it out tonight.
The plan for the evening, which has been sitting on my desk for just as long, was to take out the ST120 and go hunting for the late teen and early twenties Messier objects around Sagittarius, Scutum and Scorpius. As it turned out the remaining cloud drifted away and at half past eleven I was outside setting up under a beautiful sky, the Milky Way clear from the southern horizon all the way over my head, finally disappearing in the lighter sky to the north.
I check the scope and finder were aligned using Saturn and then rearranged the tripod to point it in the general direction of Sagittarius, took a peek in the eyepiece to check I wasn’t just pointed at trees and right there in the middle of the eyepiece was my first DSO of the evening! The next bit is perhaps the most challenging for users of unaligned manual mounts. Which DSO was it? Triangulating off Ophiucus I decided that I must be looking at M22 and I was off and running…
I guickly found M25 and M28 just navigating around the sky using a 32mm eyepiece and then dropped down to M20 and M21. Wow! Even with a 120mm scope under mid-summer skies and with a touch of light pollution as well there is so much nebulosity visible around that group of objects. I could probably have stopped right there for the evening. I did keep coming back to them afterwards.
Moving up I found M23 and then came back eastwards to pick up M25, marvelling at the sheer number of stars visible in some of the clusters. It was like looking into the Total Perspective Vortex. From M25 it’s a short hop up to M18 and then M17. An absolute jaw-dropper. I really just wasn’t expecting it. About this time something appeared on my shoulder and started whispering into my ear “You need more aperture. You need lots more aperture”. Yes, yes, I’m working on it.
I should have hit M16 before M17. It almost seemed an anticlimax the other way around which really isn’t fair as it’s a lovely object in its own right.
Starting to feel a bit tired now I thought I’d have a quick look for M62 which I’d tried before but couldn’t find. I was on such a roll that it popped out of the eyepiece really easily, a small fuzzy ball.
I was on the point of packing up the eyepieces at that point when I found that I just wasn’t ready to stop. I had to try a few more objects. M6 and M8 were easier to find than I expected, but M7 was just in the tree line by this time and I took that as a sign that it really was time to call it a night.
My only “failure” of the evening was M24. I could find where it ought to have been, no problem, but just couldn’t see it. Stellarium lists it as magnitude 11, so perhaps it was just too big a stretch for my ST120 on that night under those skies. Despite this my “Messier Total” has now reached 96. If I can find M24 and M83 I stand a reasonable chance of finishing them all this year.
As I was packing up I had a quick check of the stars in Ursa Minor. The magnitude 5.7 star between ηUMi and ζUMi was definitely visible with direct vision. For the day before the solstice, I can be very happy with that.
People rave about M45, but I reckon the clusters in this area of sky are at least as outstanding, and there are so many of them. Unfortunately they’re visible for such a short time at the worst possible time of year for viewing. I feel quite envious of those who are further south and get a better view for longer.