Hunting Barnard’s Star

10-11 June 2021, 23:50 – 01:40 (BST)

Seeing: Good

Transparency: Average (but only during the “dark” window from 00:30 to 01:30)

Conditions: Similar to the previous night, but with two significant differences: the condensation was back, and so were the mosquitoes...

A succession of late nights (not helped by some ambiguous clear-sky forecasts) were starting to catch up with me, so I spent much of the session just ambling along the Milky Way with the 13mm Ethos (at 92x). Without wishing to sound like a spokesman for Tele Vue, all my TV eyepieces are exceptional, but the Ethos is something else – and not just because of the extra-wide field. There’s a crispness to its image which – coupled with the immersive fov and the slightly longer eye relief (compared to the Naglers) – makes for a really special viewing experience.

The only downside is that I was so wrapped up in the view, I was a bit lax about taking notes (how do you even begin to describe a 100-degree afov of the Milky Way through Cygnus and Vulpecula?), but I did record the following observations:

NGC 6910, open cluster, Cygnus

Pretty y-shaped cluster with two bright stars at either end of the “y” (one of which has an orange hue). Fainter stars showing with averted vision.

M80, globular cluster, Scorpius

As per previous observations, but now I was catching glimpses of another, fainter star roughly due west of the cluster (at 90 degrees to the bright 8.5m field star).

Barnard’s Star, Ophiuchus

Found it at last – after some previous half-hearted attempts. At a distance of six light-years, this is the Sun’s fourth-closest neighbour (after the Alpha Centauri system) and the closest one visible from the northern hemisphere. You need a good finder chart to track it down and fortunately chart A1 in SA 2000 is up to the job. Visually of course there isn’t much to see other than a magnitude 9.5 star in a fairly rich field, but it’s certainly thought-provoking and worthy of contemplation. I expected its redness would make it stand out, but what little colour I could see was subtle: a very slight orange tinge.

I followed that with some enjoyable views of M11, M71 and M27 before relocating to Cepheus. I failed to spot galaxy NGC 6951, but reflection nebula NGC 7023 and the cluster/galaxy pairing of NGC 6939 and NGC 6946 were just about visible through the midsummer murk.

I tried to compensate for the deteriorating transparency by adding the OIII filter, squeezing in views of NGC 7000, NGC 6888 and the Veil Nebula before the end of the session.