August 29, 2010 – Lyra etc – redux

10pm, back deck

Conditions:
no clouds, clear sky, moon is bright (3/4) — sky is  a bit darker than yesterday maybe because the moon is not so high (it’s an hour earlier than yesterday)

Scope:
150mm/1200mm dob

The plan (same as yesterday):

• Epsilon Lyra (double double)
• M57 – Ring Nebula (Lyra)
• M56 – Globular cluster (Lyra)
• Albireo – double (Cygnus)
• M27 – Dumbell Nebula (Vulpecula)
• M71 – Globular cluster (Sagitta)

Observations:

Lyra is very high in the sky making it difficult to look at through the spotting scope. Especially with my (still) broken neck.

• Epsilon Lyra – Started at Vega and easily found Epsilon – was able to split the pairs (easily with 25mm ep), couldn’t split each pair with 25mm ep + 2x barlow. Tried 10mm ep + 2x barlow and lo and behold, I could just split the pairs!!  In my scope, it was horizontal pair on the left and vertical pair on the right (..    : ) and  I’m facing WSW or thereabouts.
  

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• M57 – still pretty cool! – Like yesterday, I began at Vega and hopped to the delta/zeta stars (both fit in finder), then hopp ed to beta. Found M 57 pretty easily. Pretty faint. In 25mm ep was small. 10mm EP was the best to view it though with the 10mm ep + 2x barlow it was still pretty detailed (If a fuzzy circle can have detail).
  

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• Albireo – I thought I could see Albireo with the naked eye, and so I lined it up with the finder. Through the 25mm ep I could easily see the split — big yellow star and smaller blue star! Looked the same through the 10mm.
• M56 – Knowing that M56 is midway between Albireo and gamma-Lyra, I could guestimate where i
  

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  t was….but still it was pretty hard to find. I ended up star hopping from gamma-Lyra, using around 4- or 5-magnitude stars as landmarks. This was crazy hard but eventually with some luck I spotted a smudge in the viewfinder. With the 25mm ep + 2x barlow I could definitely see individual points of light in the smudge. And while the 10mm ep + 2x barlow was darker, it masks the dimmer stars (the ‘smoke’) and confirms the individual brighter stars.

• M71 – I could see Sagitta with the naked eye, and so I centered the finder on the middle star, delta-Sagitta (I’m getting pretty good at this!). M71 would be about
  

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  midway between delta and gamma Saggita (what my star map has as the arrowhead). I pointed the finder in about the area (both stars fit in the finder) – a few times I had to try this – and lo I spotted the smudge using the 25mm ep! This globular cluster seems less globular than M56….it’s less ’round’…but still I was able to discern some individual stars.

• M27 – The star map showed a mag 6 or 7 star at right angle
  

  Image via Wikipedia

  from Saggita, about the same distance away as the the arrowhead is from delta-Sagitta. A bit to ‘the left’ would be M27. I hopped to the mag 6 and then centered the finder on what should have been the location….and so I found the M27 smudge. I forgot that this was the dumbell nebula so I didn’t take time to realize the dumbell shape. But it didn’t seem as bright as M57 – maybe because by this time the sky is brighter with the moon higher. I’ll go back to it another night.

I went back to Epsilon Lyra to double check that I could split the pairs…yup!

This was only an hour of observing but I was tired and my neck was hurting to I packed it in. A great session!

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