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This was a night of discovery for me! I found 5 new Messier objects tonight. All of them were open star clusters. I spend the morning painstakingly
collimating the scope and let it cool for a couple of hours before using it. The neighbors helped out too by turning off their deck light early. I'm almost to the halfway point now in my
attempt to observe the entire Messier list of 110 objects.
I started by looking for M52. I've had a surprising amount of trouble finding it in the past. A small scattering of stars caught my eye while sweeping
the area. I wasn't sure if that was it or not so I made a quick sketch of the view in hopes of being able to verify it from the Skyrover.net sketches. You can find the M52 sketch from
Skyrover.net here. When I saw the
Skyrover sketch, I realized that I had indeed located M52.
The next target was M93. This is a surprisingly small and compact but beautiful gem of a cluster. I was quite impressed especially since I was viewing
the cluster directly over my neighbors garage roof. The star near it that I was using the Telrad to key off of was barely visible through the Minneapolis sky glow. This will have to be a
cluster I take a look at from a dark site.
M48 was next. This is a nice cluster that had four striking pairs of double stars in the center. I matched up my sketch of it with Skyrover's and was
pleased to see how identical they were.
The best cluster of the night was M35 without question. This is a gorgeous cluster. The stars vary greatly in brightness with lends a nice feeling of
depth instead of just a flat two-dimensional image. There is also a beautiful curve of stars in the cluster with two brighter stars on the ends and dimmer ones in between.
M34 was the last cluster of the night. Compared to the others and especially when compared to M35, this cluster seems small and unimpressive. Looking at
the Skyrover.net sketch shows the bright stars that I saw but also a lot of dimmer stars that I didn't see. Perhaps the sky was just too bright to show the cluster in its full glory. I'll
have to take another look at it from a dark site.
This was an amazing night. I was able to find most of the clusters without problem. When I wasn't sure, I made a sketch which I was able to use to
verify the observation. Everything seemed to go so well tonight and it was a lot of fun. There was only one fish that got away. I spent a lot of time looking for the galaxy M74. The
magnitude was listed as 9.4 and with galaxies the surface brightness is always lower than the listed magnitude. The sky glow was just too strong for M94 and it wasn't visible. Next time I'm
out at Baylor (one of the MAS dark-sky sites) M74 will be on the observing list for sure.
Until next time.... clear skies!
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