Last night was the first crystal clear night I have seen since winter/spring time, and I just had to take advantage of it. Although I had work the next day I still got a couple hours of viewing and sketching in. This weekend was great for clear skies, Thursday and Friday were quite clear, and Saturday cleared up by about 1am although I didn't go out that night, followed by Sunday being really clear. If you missed my post on NGC 457 check it out, that cluster was cool!
I set out not knowing exactly what I wanted to observe and sketch but I knew it was going to be a great night to get the best visual for it. I know I've posted a picture I took of M57 - The Ring Nebula in Lyra back in April, but I decided I'd have a go with sketching it. I really like the way sketches come out and show how it looks through the telescope. The only difference is the visual on paper is a bit bigger due to the size circles I drew on the paper, but the detail you see in the sketch is the detail you see through the eyepiece. I also went for a small open cluster, M29, in the constellation Cygnus - The Swan.
M57 - a planetary nebula is a great object to point your telescope at to determine how the transparency and seeing is that night. It is almost smack dab in-between the stars Sulafat and Sheliak. Some nights I go out aim at it and can't see it with any of the eyepieces, and sometimes I can aim at it with the 32mm (31.25x magnification) and spot it right off. Last night M57 was just a faint little fuzzy object in my 32mm, could easily look past it (but still quite visible), or mistake it for a smudge on the eyepieces. Knowing what it was I put in the 12.5mm (80x magnification), centered it in view and turned on the motor drive to keep it in view. In the 12.5mm it is perfectly round and soft looking, almost fluffy; reminds me quite a bit of a Cheerio in the sky. Also in view were quite a few faint stars, I counted about 26 while viewing. Some stars were only visible with averted vision and some were visible while looking straight at them.
I then put in the 6mm (166.6667x magnification) and WOW was it big. At that much magnification it's almost too much for my telescope to handle. At a certain point telescopes just can't take much more magnification and I was getting close with this, but with the seeing as good as it was last night I was able to do it. Focusing on M57 was a bit tricky, but I just aimed at a brighter star nearby, focused then went back to the Ring Nebula. The field of view is quite small with the 6mm and mainly the objects I could see were M57, 4 faint stars, and one quite a bit brighter near the bottom right edge of my field of view.
The thumbnail view is a good representation of this image in the eyepiece.
M57 - The Ring Nebula in Lyra The Harp. Planetary Nebula. Click to enlarge.
After the Ring Nebula I tried to find the small magnitude 8 globular cluster labeled M56, thought I would get two near objects in one sitting. I for the life of me couldn't find it, so I went on to a loosely packed open cluster at a magnitude of 6.6 in the constellation Cygnus. I have seen this cluster before, but never stopped at it and really gave it much of a look until last night. I aimed at it with the 32mm and it kind of formed a shape that resembled an outline of or stick-figure of a butterfly (go ahead look at the picture below you'll see it too). Once I got it in sight I started looking at it through the 12.5mm, still resembled what I saw before. Even at this magnification counting only the brightest stars in view as the main cluster I only saw about 10 stars, plus all the dimmer hard to see stars surrounding it. Getting this as close to accurate as I can is quite time consuming, you really get the chance to observe the object when doing a sketch. At least it keeps me from going all over the place.
The 6mm eyepiece revealed about 16 brighter stars with the dimmer stars being a background to the main brighter stars. Saw a double star in the lower right side of the field of view. Focusing on this cluster wasn't as hard due to the brighter stars already being in view. M29 can be found near the star Sadr in the constellation Cygnus.
The thumbnail view is a good representation of this image in the eyepiece.
M29 in Cygnus the Swan. Open cluster. Click to enlarge.
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