Stormy Skies

25 – 26 June 2020, 23:45 – 2:00

Conditions: Very warm and muggy. Distant thunderstorm on southern horizon. Clouding over towards end of session.

Seeing: Atrocious
Transparency: Poor

The universe clearly doesn’t want me to see those last few Messier globular clusters – at least not just yet. As soon as I went out I could see flashes of red-hued light sporadically illuminating a bank of clouds hugging the southern horizon, possibly as far away as France judging by the lack of thunder. A look through the binoculars confirmed my fears: no stars at all visible below about -30 degrees declination, so M69 and M70 would have to wait for another night.

As it turned out, the seeing was the worst it’s been since I got the XT10 – even worse than the previous night. Despite giving the scope ample time to cool down, Antares looked like a bulbous sky lantern no matter how much I tweaked the fine focuser. Objects higher in the sky like M11 looked a little better, but the pin-sharp detail I’ve become accustomed to was only fleetingly visible; most of the time it looked like a rippling, smeared-out mess.

Nevertheless, the scope was outside and the sky was clear (sort of), so I carried on as best I could. All observations at 133x with the 9mm Nagler.

NGC 6712, globular cluster, Scutum
A fuzzy round blob – which, to be fair, is kind of how it looks at the best of times. Still, it showed up fairly well.

NGC 6751, planetary nebula, Aquila
Small, pale disc – brightens with averted vision. Quite prominent despite the poor conditions. While sweeping towards this object I noticed a very distinctive red star which turned out to be the carbon star V Aquilae.

NGC 6638, globular cluster, Sagittarius
Condensed blur just east of Lambda Sagittarii, fainter than M28.

NGC 6642, globular cluster, Sagittarius
Small round blur, west and a little north of M22 (which was pretty washed out again tonight). Condensed core with averted vision.

M71, globular cluster, Sagitta
Rich arrowhead-shaped mass of stars (quite apt considering the constellation it resides in). More condensed than any open cluster, but quite loose for a globular.

From about 1:45 I noticed the first clouds passing overhead, travelling south to north. By 02:00 over half the sky was covered, so I called it quits for the night. The storm itself eventually arrived (with a vengeance) just before 6 AM, waking me up after less than three hours’ sleep.

Nature note:
Stoker, the neighbours’ black cat, silently appearing as if out of nowhere beside my scope in the way that only cats do. And later, after the cat had gone, several frogs noisily roaming the garden in the way that only frogs do.