Had the pleasure of being accompanied by Jeff Newland last night at Keller. Cool, wind speed = 0 mph. Mosquitos struggling to get into my ears with the temps falling. Predicted to be clear, but it was like someone over the horizon had a cloud gun shooting random pesky little puffs right wherever we were pointing. Jeff had his new Zhumell 10" dob and I brought the WallE.
It was glob night! Jeff found M3,5,13, 22, 28 and more. Also excellent views of Dumbbell, Ring, Lagoon, and Omega nebs. Nice contrast demonstrated on his scope. It's got a real good mirror.
Since the southern skies are lousy from my home, I stayed mostly around Sagittarius/Scorpios. Nice view of combos:
Antares/M4. The vertical stacks of M16/M17/M18/M25, and Lagoon/Trifid/M21. I have to move WallE slightly to get these together but it's a delight to see them all connected.
Then the two of us concentrated on the neighborhood of Kaus Borealis – the star on top of the teapot. To its right (west) sits pretty little M28, a glob. But to its east sits even a smaller glob, NGC 6638, and to its northeast sits planetary nebula 6644, which is more of a planetary speck than a nebula, only 3 arc seconds across! It's not on the Herschel 400 list, but I now see it's on my AL Planetary Neb list. Booyah! Low flying moisture muffins were constantly challenging our view. But Jeff, see attached pic from my Sky Tools program which confirms. Having never seen it before, we were unsure if it was just another star or the nebula. It was right where we thought it was, by those 2 other brighter stars.
Ended with a quick look at the North America Nebula with WallE. The edges were so obvious. Very AGNFA!
Will be out this weekend at a family reunion. :-\
Randy
Attachments:
