Having had an excellent night two nights ago I had six Messier objects left to find and set myself the goal of finding M7 this week on the basis that whatever happens in August, between the Moon and the turning of the seasons it will be lost to me until next summer. According to Stellarium it was going to be a really tricky object to find anyhow as it wasn’t going to get much more than four degrees above the horizon at any point.
I had the ST120 out cooling early and took it up to my usual observing site at about 11pm. The sky was clear of cloud, but the seeing was very poor with light pollution from the local town particularly being scattered as much as fifteen degrees up from the horizon. Nonetheless I was on a mission. Clearly the trees have grown an awful lot or the configuration of Stellarium is not quite perfect as its idea of where M7 should be was clearly higher than it could actually be judging from the position Kaus Australis which was the initial point for my star hop and pretty much the same altitude. Kaus Australis was actually below the maximum height of the tree line though I could see it through a gap, so I was feeling fairly negative about my chances of finding M7, but as I panned westwards across the treetops it suddenly popped out in a small gap. I had to wait for the trees as they moved to be able to see it and I’m not actually sure I could see the entire cluster at any one point, but there was nothing else in Stellarium that it could be and based on the few stars and its alignment with the “tail” of Scorpius I’m certain I found it. I still feel somewhat cheated though. Short of taking a scope much further south or finding a hill with a completely clear southern horizon I don’t think there’s much else I can do though.
My “backup plan” for the evening was to find M30, but it was too early and Capriconus was lost in the haze of light to the east anyhow, so I left the scope out and returned to the house to grab some binoculars and spent an hour sitting on the patio watching the sky, looking for meteors and satellites (I saw at least half a dozen of each including what I believe was an Iridium flare, but it disappeared over the house before I could catch up with it). I’ve never had a “good” summer for observing, so I took some time to try to familiarise myself with the orientation of summer constellations and to revisit old friends such as M13. Away from the light pollution around the horizon the sky was much clearer and far more enjoyable to look around.
Around midnight the sky seemed to suddenly get much darker. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if the local towns have some sort of “switch off” policy at midnight. There certainly seemed to be a marked and immediate change in the darkness of the sky. It was also getting a fair bit colder and when I returned to the scope it was running with dew. Capricornus was visible by this stage though still affected by the haze on the horizon. I found the semi-circle of stars around ζ Capricorni and just swung the scope around a little to the north to find M30 quite easily. In the haze it appeared very dense, somewhat like an unfocused star and no detail was visible, but I have at least found it and Capricornus will be higher in the sky later in the year for me to look at it again.
Although the evening had started off disappointing, spending time with the bins and finding M30 in a clearer sky more than made up for it so I decided to call it a night and returned to the house to dry off the scope. This takes my total of Messier objects found up to 106., leaving just M74, M77, M79 and M83 to find.
As it turned out, I wasn’t done there. I woke up at 3:30am and went to get a drink, passing a window facing north-east. As I looked out of the window I could see Venus chasing Jupiter away from the oncoming dawn. If I’d been a little more aware of what was going on I could also have seen the Pleiades and an ISS pass, but even so I don’t think I have reason to be too unhappy with my nights viewing.