July 4, 2000 (Independence Day)

I had just gotten back from shooting off fireworks and was pretty tired, so had pretty much decided to forego any observing tonight. But when I got home, I noticed that my neighbor's porch light was turned off, the sky was absolutely cloudless, and the two day old moon was already setting, so I changed my mind and decided to get a little observing in.

Since the neighbor was out of town (which is why her porch lights were off), I was able to move into the edge of her back yard, which offered a better view of the southeastern sky. By the time I got home, Scorpius was already behind some nearby trees to the south of me, but the Teacup asterism of Sagittarius was fully visible. This would probably be the best opportunity this summer to take a peek at the southern constellations from my back yard, so it was too good to pass up.

While searching for M24 (Delle Caustiche), I was struck by the group of stars that contained the Messier object. In fact, it appeared that the stars were part of a loose open cluster. This group of stars appeared to me to be flying saucer-shaped, with stars forming a rough cigar-shape and a triangular dome of stars on top. At low powers, M24 seems to be a slightly fuzzy member of the cigar portion of the starfield. I was using this as a jumping off point to find other Messier objects, so didn't spend much time on it. I will provide a more detailed report at some later date.

At low power (32x), a small, obvious nebular patch is visible below the star g Scu. Bumping the magnification up to 56x reveals a little more detail. In fact, it vaguely resembles a chevron or boomerang, with the point of the chevron pointing almost directly toward g Scu. Even though the higher magnification lessens the amount of light coming in, the increased contrast from the background sky makes it even more obvious than at low powers. At 117x, the nebula became too dim to see.

About a dozen members are visible at low power. It appeared to have nebulosity toward the middle of the cluster. At 56x, most of the nebulosity was resolved into individual stars, about 30 members being visible. At this medium power, the cluster encompasses the entire field of view. Jumping up to 117x resolves many other members, but because only the center portion of the cluster is visible, it loses a lot of it's shape. With the left-right reversal through my eyepiece, the cluster reminds me of the main stars in the constellation Orion, with the "belt" stars being about twice as far apart proportionally as they are in the actual constellation.

At low power, this cluster takes up most of the field of view, and it is hard to tell exactly which stars are members of the cluster at its edges. I counted about 20 stars of almost equal brightness, along with a large number of fainter stars interspersed between. The center section of the cluster has about 11 of the brighter stars, arranged in an unique shape that is difficult to describe. Overall, this is a nice cluster, and at medium to high powers, becomes pretty rich.

M12 is a really faint globular, and is almost impossible for me to see with direct vision. I was only able to spot it for certain by moving my telescope around slightly and catching a bright spot out of the corner of my eye. At 56x, M12 nearly disappears completely.

M10 seems to be slightly brighter than M12, but I am unable to resolve any stars. At 56x, M10 shows up pretty nicely, but is still unresolved. The increased contrast of the higher magnification has made the cluster really jump out at me.

The constellation Ophiuchus is in a fairly light-polluted portion of the sky for me, so its not too surprising that I had a hard time seeing M12. Under a darker sky, I'm sure it would show up much better.