Uncle Rod's Astro Blog

Thomas Wolfe said, among many other things, “You can’t go home again.” Is that true? Mostly, muchachos, but not always and not completely. If you’re a long-time reader of the Little Old Blog from Possum Swamp, you know our local star party, originally the Deep South Regional Star Gaze, and now the Deep South Star Gaze, was an every-year tradition with me and Miss Dorothy for over two decades. But then much changed. We retired, the pandemic came, and the star party moved to a new location. 

We visited its new venue, a private religious camp, for the 2023 edition, but above and beyond clouds causing a good, old-fashioned skunking on all three nights (which can happen anywhere, anytime), we were not happy with the facility and the food. Most of all, it just didn’t have that “Deep South feel” and Dorothy and I reluctantly decided we wouldn’t be back. 

Then, a few months ago, we got word from DSSG’s longtime director, Barry Simon, that our favorite star party would be moving back to its previous home, The Feliciana Retreat Center (FRC) in Norwood, Louisiana, a place we’d always liked, for the 2025 edition. Dorothy and I didn’t have to do any thinking; we sent in our registration and began looking forward to going home again. 

As the big day approached for us, November 20 (we’d attend Thursday - Sunday of the event), I began ruminating on the equipment I’d haul to the backwoods of Louisiana. Certainly, I’d take Zelda the 10-inch Dob, who is now my big gun, but what else? I’ve yet to get Suzie, my ZWO S50 smartscope under dark skies. And, hey, why not take the Unistellar 4-inch smartscope, too? I could do visual one night and devote the other two to the smarties. But then everything changed. 

Unpacking at the Lodge.

More properly, the weather forecasts changed. Predictions for the week before Thanksgiving, never good, were looking dire less than two weeks out. The closer we got, the less likely it appeared we would see anything at Deep South other than the undersides of clouds. I immediately eliminated the smartscopes from the gear loadout. If the weathermen were correct, there’d be no reason to bring them along. Shortly, I was even considering dropping back from the 10-inch Dob to the 6-inch one. Darnit. 

There was never any thought of us not going, though; even if all we could do was visit with our friends we would be there. Still, what I go to a star party for is deep sky wonders, and I was feeling disappointed. Then, a few days before the DSSG kickoff, the forecasts improved—a little. It appeared we’d get some observing in Thursday, little to none Friday, and maybe a lot Saturday. Whew! 

If I was gonna see anything, I’d need an observing list. That wasn’t difficult to compose. My current obsession, as you know, is (again) the Messiers. I don’t have a good southern horizon at Chaos Manor South, so I would concentrate on the southern “water” constellations, on the Ms in Pisces, Aquarius, Cetus, Capricornus, etc. 

With DSSG week almost here, it was time to round up all the old outdoor gear we’d used at so many star parties. First up, though, was a trip to Academy for a sleeping bag for Miss Dorothy, since hers had gone missing. We’d need bags since we weren't sure Feliciana would provide bedding, and it’s easier to bring a sleeping bag than fool with sheets, blankets, etc. Naturally, the Wednesday afternoon before Deep South, when it was time to load the 4Runner, Miss Van Pelt, my bag was also MIA. Luckily, it (and Dorothy’s old sleeping bag) turned up just before Unk headed back to Academy for another one. 

I also found the little black cat heater I used on chilly nights on the field years ago. I put it back away, though, since the weathermen were unanimous in saying we wouldn’t need it, Highs would be in the 80s and lows in the 60s except for Saturday, which might get into the 50s. The Coleman chairs were accounted for and so was the camp/observing table. While our picnic canopy, our EZ-Up, was looking a little time-worn, I judged it good enough for one more star party. I’d sprayed it with 3M waterproofing in 2023, and we’d never even set it up on the field that year. Now, I just had to get everything into the 4Runner... 

Back on the old field 8 years later!

While I’d be loading a modest amount of gear compared to what I used to lug down to Chiefland in the go-go days of the Herschel Project, I was out of practice getting everything into the truck and fumbled around for quite some time. I forgot the camp table had to go in first and on the bottom and wound up taking everything back out and reloading it all. So it goes; we were ready for Deep South. 

The trip itself was nothing. It’s just under three hours on I-10, I-12, I-55, and a short stretch on Louisiana back roads. It was entirely uneventful save for me not recognizing any of the scenery or landmarks along the way as we neared Norwood. I guess eight years’ absence will do that for you. Thanks to my trusty GPS, we found the FRC entrance without incident and were soon rolling onto the grounds. 

So, out on the field, what was the deal? Partly cloudy. Warm, very warm. A feel of possible bad weather in the air. You know what the whole thing reminded me of? Miss Dorothy’s first star party in 1994. While that was earlier in the year and at the event’s original home, Percy Quin State Park in Mississippi, the feel was eerily the same: Heat and humidity and maybe not much observing. The weather goobers were now warning of possible severe weather Friday, but it looked like the really bad stuff might bypass Norwood. 

Field set up was easy enough, since there wasn’t much to set up. The main task was getting the EZ-Up erected, but with Dorothy’s help, and the help of a fellow ham (I counted at least five fellow radio amateurs in attendance), we got the thing up before your old Uncle was quite drenched in sweat. It is nothing to set up a manual 10-inch Dobsonian (other than me struggling with the weight of Zelda’s steel tube). No computers, no cables, no batteries. With the chairs, table, and ice chest out of the truck, we motored up to the lodge to see what was what. 

My impressions of the FRC lodge nearly a decade down the road? The dining area looked as nice as ever, very nice, that is. Our small motel-type room? I didn’t notice many improvements/changes, but it was obvious the rooms were better maintained than they had been the last several years Deep South was at FRC (which is now billing itself as the “Feleciana Retreat and Conference Center). They had replaced the mattresses with better ones, and bedding was furnished, making our sleeping bags superfluous. All that remained was to hang out on the field with the old friends we’ve observed with for three decades and wait for supper at 4pm. How would that be? 

The answer was “better, much better.” The young couple doing the cooking and serving did a fine job, and Thursday’s BBQ chicken was some of the best star party food I have eaten in a while. One of the things that impelled Deep South to leave Feliciana in the first place was a decline in the quality and quantity of food. I deemed that fixed. Supper done, it was time to get a move on. With the temperature in the 80s, it didn’t feel like late November, but it was, and darkness would come not long after 6pm. 

The way the skies looked Thursday afternoon, I’d feared the night would be a complete washout (maybe literally), but as astronomical twilight came, the clouds scudded off, or at least a giant sucker hole grew until it encompassed the entire sky, giving us a couple of hours of cosmic voyaging. I’m afraid I spent most of that time fumbling and bumbling with the telescope, though. 

Your silly old Uncle was way out of practice using a dob under a dark sky. I had an awful hard time getting used to using the Rigel Quick Finder zero-power finder again. That wasn’t all. It seemed I had forgotten exactly how to work AstroHopper, the iPhone app that guided Zelda to her targets. I eventually got mostly in the groove with all that jazz and knocked a few list objects out, though. 

Note that on all three evenings I observed quite a few objects in addition to the list Messiers. But this is about the Messier Project and those are the objects Unk is gonna (mostly) tell you about… 

Images were shot with Suzie from Chaos Manor South Shortly after DSSG. 

M2 (Aquarius) 

Did not like the way the sky looked Thursday afternoon...

The second object in Messier’s catalog is one of the finest globular star clusters in the sky. It is somewhat diminished for mid-northern observers by its southerly declination down in Aquarius, but it is still quite a prize. At magnitude 6.5 and 16.0’ across, it begins to resolve in small telescopes, and in 8-inch and larger instruments it is a welter of tiny stars of Magnitude 13.1 and dimmer. With a Shapley-Sawyer Class of II, the core is quite concentrated.  

Despite swimming in and out of the haze that was beginning to cover the southern sky, M2 was well-resolved by Zelda, looking like a sparkling blue sapphire in the 13mm Ethos eyepiece at 96x. I hadn’t seen this glob, a favorite of mine in my old 12-inch telescope, looking this good in a long time. That haze no doubt reduced the cluster’s brightness, but it was still bright and prominent and well-resolved.

M2 is yet another “Messier object” not discovered by Charles Messier. Credit for that goes to. Jean Dominique Maraldi, who was out observing a comet with his buddy, Jaques Cassini, one nice French night in 1746. Charles is credited with the cluster’s rediscovery in 1760. You won’t be surprised to hear his tiny scope didn’t resolve any stars and is listed as a “nebula without stars.” In fact, nobody realized it was a star cluster till William and Caroline Herschel had a look at it some years later.   

Turning once again to my favorite Messier book, The Messier Album, John Mallas is enthusiastic about M2: “A beautiful object.” I can’t compare his observation to mine, since my instrument, Zelda, was so much larger than his 4-inch Unitron. He remarks his scope was only able to resolve “[A] few bright members across the nebulous image.” While Evered Kreimer’s photo wouldn’t be anything to write home about today, it was groundbreaking for the time. 

It's hard to get a bad image of M2!

The ZWO was faced with both light haze and a nearby Moon the week after DSSG, but she did an OK job with this magnificent cluster. 

M72 (Aquarius) 

The other Messier globular in Aquarius, M72, is that horse of a different color (the one you’ve heard tell about), being both considerably dimmer (magnitude 9.2) and smaller (6.6’) than monster M2. Discovered by Pierre Mechain, Messier observed the cluster the following year, 1781. 

Messier 72 is a small, subdued globular cluster and looked it on this evening. That doesn’t mean it was difficult to see, even in worsening conditions; it was obvious as a small fuzzball in the 27mm Panoptic when I put my eye to the eyepiece. The 8mm Ethos delivered a little resolution at 156x, but it was still more “grainy” than “resolved. The core of this Type IX cluster is quite loose but still fairly bright. 

This was not an easy object for John M’s 4-inch achromat. In his scope it was “A very small and nebulous patch of light” He was able to tell detect M72’s loose structure, however. 

It wasn't so much that this was a dimmer object, but that conditions were not right for imaging. Miss S50 and I went after M72 anyway, and at least we got a little "cosmic postcard, " a memory of a night under the stars, for our efforts

Sadly, that was it for list-objects on Thursday evening. The southern area of the sky was out of action by 7pm. I spent the remainder of the night looking at some pretty stuff (the Veil was decent, and M15 was a mindblower at high power) before retiring to the lodge room just before 9 for YouTube videos and sarsaparillas. 

Then came Friday morning. How would breakfast be? Good. Very good and lots of it. The star of the show was the biscuits and sausage gravy. There was more—eggs, grits, sausage--but that was just the supporting cast for Unk. Excellent. 

Suzie's M52.

Sometimes star party days go slowly, but I found things to do on Friday. I sat in the dining hall with the MacBook Air, making notes on my observations, and…installing a new astronomy program. Unk has SkySafari Pro 7 on his iPhone and loves it. However, when I opened the program on the Mac I realized I was still on 6. I was able to download 7 for free and was excited to have the new one on the MacBook. 

Well, until I tried it. Simulation Curriculum, the makers, didn’t do a good job porting it from the iPad to the Apple Silicon Macs. Zooming is broken. Oh, you can zoom, but you have to use buttons. For me, zooming with the mouse/trackpad is erratic at best. Luckily, 6 is still on the Mac and that is what I will use. Maybe they’ll fix 7, but after this long, I doubt it. 

Following a great supper of Thanksgiving ham, dressing, and all the fixings, Friday night started out promising, but clouds began rolling in not long after dark. The southern constellations were soon gone, but the north-northeast was clear for a while, and that’s where me and Zelda went. Starting with a look at a nice open cluster... 

M52 (Cassiopeia) 

Finally a Messier Object discovered by Messier! He spotted this galactic cluster floating along the Cassiopeia Milky Way in 1774. At Magnitude 7.7 this magnitude 6.9, 15.0’ diameter open cluster is trivial for binoculars or very small telescopes. 

M52 was certainly impressive in Zelda… I hadn’t expected too much on this increasingly punk night, but it was outstanding, looking more like a loose globular cluster than a galactic cluster. A bright star on the edge of the cluster’s densest section made it distinctive. 

Mallas didn’t see much here with his Unitron. Other than that single bright star, the 4-inch didn’t resolve M55 or even make it look grainy. I wonder if John observed this one on a poorer night, since it seems to me I’ve had some good looks at it and considerable resolution with 4-inch telescopes. 

Most open clusters aren't a challenge for the ZWO. Suze delivered a nice portrait of this one with only five minutes of exposure. 

I hoped for clearing, but as 9pm came, the sky got worse. I did manage two more deep sky objects, though, the stars of our 1994 Deep South: 

M74 (Pisces) 

Suzie did a nice job on the Phantom given the conditions

Numero uno was the Phantom galaxy in Pisces, M74, which was first spotted by Pierre Mechain in September of 1780. Messier was able to confirm the observation a few weeks later, which I find impressive. His scope was tiny, and this is the second toughest Messier (after M101). Why? It’s not terrifically dim at magnitude 9.4, but it is large, 10.5’ across, and the light of this face-on Sc galaxy is badly spread-out, giving it a surface brightness of 14.1. It is an object for 10-inch and larger scopes under dark and steady skies. I’ve had the best success with it when the seeing is excellent. 

As I’ve written many a time, the best look I have ever had of M74 was that fall of ’94 at Deep South with Betsy, my old 12-inch Dob (then in her original Meade Sonotube). This night? I’d be hard put to say M74 looked any worse. Conditions on both nights were similar, including both slightly reduced transparency and steady seeing. When AstroHopper told me I was there, the galaxy was immediately obvious in the 27mm Panoptic eyepiece. Best views were in the Happy Hand Grenade (Zhumell/TMB) 16mm 100° (78x) and the 13mm Ethos, both of which delivered mucho spiral structure. My visit to the star party this year was worth it just for this one observation. 

Unsurprisingly, John Mallas found Messier 74 a difficult object indeed for his long focal length Unitron refractor (he notes it was more noticeable in his 40mm finder). Be that as it may, his drawing with the 4-inch indicates he was seeing some spiral structure, quite a feat. Kreimer’s black and white (Tri-X) photo is lovely, and competitive with modern pictures.   

Little Suzie, the SeeStar S50, had to go after the Phantom Galaxy on yet another humid night. While it’s not the best image she’s ever done, she had no problem picking up the spiral arms (and a piece of photobombing space junk). I’m frankly amazed at what she did from my bright backyard. 

M33 (Triangulum) 

It’s difficult to say who originally discovered Messier 33, since it is (barely) a naked eye object at magnitude 5.7—I’ve certainly never seen it without optical aid. What is certain is that Messier spotted it in 1764.  Its large size, 68.7’ x 41.5’ means that despite its bright magnitude, its surface brightness is relatively low, and it’s not that easy to spot the multiple spiral arms of this near face-on SA galaxy. 

The Triangulum Galaxy isn’t a water dweller but was in the clear and was the other star of 1994. It was very good, with its spiral arms amazingly evident—as in “slapped me in the face” evident. I hunted around a bit before I saw the galaxy’s huge emission nebula, NGC 604, but once I oriented myself, there it was. Was it quite as starkly visible as in 1994, when I had two more inches of aperture, a more transparent sky, and younger eyes? No, but it was easy, nevertheless.  One last look and M33 faded out as clouds enveloped the sky. 

You won’t be surprised to hear Mallas’ small, slow achromat had a tough time with M33. This is just not an object for narrow field scopes (and eyepieces): “[It] is very faint and difficult in the 4-inch f/15 refractor. Instruments with smaller focal ratios will do much better.” He mentions a bright central region with nebulous patches around it and that is it. 

Suzie? This is a bit on the large side for her (though I could use mosaic mode if I had the patience for that), but it’s not an object that gives her trouble. 

Saturday 

Zelda hoping for Starlight Saturday afternoon...

We had high hopes for Saturday. The usual weather sources on the web (the FRC now has good Internet at the lodge thanks to Starlink) said it might be a good night. Hell, it might even be a long night. Astrospheric pronounced, “OK at sundown but getting better after 8pm local time.” I was skeptical. There wasn’t the feel of a front passage, not a barreling passage like in 1994, anyway. So far, it was more clouds and ever-higher humidity. 

The sky did look pretty good just before astronomical twilight. Then, as I sat out on the field with Len and Annette Philpot, a bank of low, dark clouds drifted in from the south and stayed for a while. They did move off when darkness arrived, but I was nervous that this was a harbinger of things to come… 

Long night? No. In the end, we got maybe 90 minutes of fruitful observing. The Milky Way was visible, but not as bright as it is at this site on a truly good evening, and deep sky objects of all types were passable but subdued. I had the feeling conditions might get worse rather than better after 8pm, contrary to what Astrospheric said, so I didn’t waste any time ticking the remaining water Ms off my list on SkySafari. Since my phone was dedicated to AstroHopper, I had the Mac on the field under the canopy. It was a real help at times. With clouds floating around, out of practice visual observer me sometimes lost his way among partially obscured constellations. SkySafari’s beautiful charts saved me every time. 

The night’s haul? Modest, but not bad for an hour and a half with me giving each object sufficient attention: 

M73 (Aquarius) 

Chuck Messier spotted this asterism in 1780 and thought he saw nebulosity along with four stars. Herschel, however, observed the cluster and found absolutely no trace of the nebulosity Messier thought he’d seen. It was long thought that M73 was a galactic cluster, but spectroscopic studies done a couple of decades ago revealed the four stars are at drastically different distances from Earth. 

This little group of stars isn’t a cluster, but it’s an M anyway. I’d somehow passed it by on the previous two evenings and wanted to get it in the log, lackluster as it is. What you have here is an asterism of four somewhat prominent stars of magnitude 10 – 12 that cover an area of 9.0’. 

All Mr. Mallas has to say about M73’s appearance is, “Messier’s description matches what was seen in the 4-inch. Moderate magnification shows the quartet centered in the photograph.” In other words, “Ho-hum,” which is my reaction as well.

This was obviously nothing for Miss Suze, who showed four stars in a backwards checkmark shape in a short exposure. It doesn't look much different from the shot in The Messier Album.

M30 (Capricornus) 

This Shapley-Sawyer Class V globular cluster was discovered by Messier in the summer of 1764. Like the other globs he observed, it was not known to be a star cluster until William Herschel observed it. At magnitude 6.9, and a size of 12.0’, it’s not difficult for smaller scopes, though they may need dark skies to deliver much resolution. 

M30, which I call “The Goat Cluster,” is one of my favorites, mainly for a curious feature, two streams of stars on the southeastern side of the cluster. More prominent visually than in photos, they suggest the horns of a goat, fitting for a cluster in the Sea Goat. They were visible on this night in the 13mm Ethos but were not as prominent as usual. For one thing, Capricornus was beginning to descend into the west, and for another, the haze was thicker than ever.   

While Mallas’ Unitron didn’t pick up many stars, he still called this “A splendid object even in small apertures.” He also notes the cluster’s “unusual” appearance, which I take to me the star streams mentioned above. Kreimer’s photo shows the “goat horns” remarkably well. 

Despite conditions, the girl did a nice job on the Goat, her image showing the horns clearly. 

Our final night started out promisingly--but didn't stay that way.

M77 (Cetus) 

Prolific observer Pierre Mechain ran across this magnitude 8.9 SA galaxy in 1780. Of course, he didn’t know anything about galaxies and told His friend Charles he had discovered a nebula down in Cetus. This small (7.1’) object is easy to see thanks to its intensely bright center. M77 is known to be an active Seyfert galaxy and a strong radio source (Cetus A). It is also on Halton Arp’s list of peculiar galaxies. 

Cetus A has never been a challenge in any scope for me. This was one of the few that I could see easily with my 4-inch f/10 Newtonian from the backyard of the old Chaos Manor South downtown. On this evening? Bright. Fascinating. What you see is a large, nebulous envelope surrounding a bright central region with a disk and spiral arms. I bumped up the power to over 200x with the 5.7mm ES eyepiece in hopes of seeing that spiral structure, and I did get a glimpse or two of it on a night that was winding down. 

Mallas was impressed with M77, calling it “One of the best objects for viewing in small apertures.” Not surprisingly, the Unitron didn’t show any spiral features, He does, however, seem to see that the central area of Cetus A is different from that of other galaxies. 

The problem with M77 for the smartscope is that it's a little small, and there is a limit to the central detail you can expect.

M75 (Sagittarius) 

It’s not clear whether this one should be credited to Mechain or Messier. It is known that Charles at least confirmed Mechain’s observation in October of 1780. Once again, it was The Man, William Herschel, who first resolved this Magnitude 8.6 cluster. How to describe this glob? Tight, small, relatively bright. It’s a Shapley-Sawyer Type I, the most highly concentrated class. At only 6.8’ across, it is easy to see. 

I got to this one a little late; it was low enough that it wasn’t quite as bright as it should have been in a 10-inch telescope. Which doesn’t mean it wasn’t prominent and easy—it was. However, what I saw was nothing more than a grainy fuzzball with a reasonably bright core. 

His 4-inch presented John Mallas with an M55 that was just a nebulous ball with a bright core. In other words, not much different from what I saw in my 10-inch. I was, however, able to see a grainy texture suggesting resolution, which Mallas didn’t detect in his 4-inch. 

Small, low, on the dim side. Well, at least Suze and I got something. 

And then more clouds came. I waited ‘em out, and they began to thin (some) around 9pm, but only some. Astrospheric had begun talking about “mist,” and it now looked to me as if the clouds hadn’t really left; they had just reduced their altitude. As a check, I sent Zelda to NGC 891, the famous edge-on galaxy in Andromeda. Initially, I thought Astro-hopper had missed. Finally, I spotted a dim, slightly elongated glow in the field. I’ve seen this galaxy better with an 8-inch SCT. NGC 7331 was about the same, there, but lackluster. I could see it with fair ease, but the “deer” accompanying the Deer Lick Galaxy, the small galaxies in the field, were invisible. 

Time to throw the big switch? Nope… I wanted to try out my wonderful prize! Your aged Uncle, who rarely wins anything astronomical, had won a TeleVue eyepiece at the Saturday raffle drawing! And a very special (and specialized) TeleVue it was, the 55mm Plössl. This is an eyepiece I’ve thought about buying for years, but I have always hesitated. Mainly thanks to that enormous exit pupil, which is a bit large even for my SCTs. I had one now, though, and I was going to try it out on an f/5 telescope. 

M45 (Taurus) 

Wow! I won something!

Messier placed this galactic cluster in his list, but it had, of course been known since time immemorial—Homer mentions it. The Seven Sisters compose an enormous open cluster—the sisters are only a central region, and they encompass two full degrees of sky. These bright young stars shine with a combined magnitude of 1.5.  In former times the blue nebulosity associated with them was thought to be remnants of the gas that formed cluster the cluster. Then, someone mentioned the color, blue, which is indicative of reflection nebulosity, not hydrogen that forms stars. The Merope Nebula is merely dust with the consistency of cigarette smoke that the cluster is drifting through. 

First object for the 55mm? Why M45, of course. It was quite something to encompass most of the Pleiads in the field of a 10-inch telescope. Exit pupil, exit schmupil; I even convinced myself I saw a trace of the Merope Nebula (uh-huh). 

John has a lot to say about the Pleiades, but mostly background and technical information as it was known well nearly 60 years ago. His big Unitron was, after all, a very narrow instrument for this object. He does tell us of seeing the Merope Nebula with his scope from the dark skies of Arizona, though, which is a master class observation. 

I needed to post this article before I was able to give Suzie a shot at M45, but in the past she’s done a good job on the Daughters of Atlas. 

Saturn 

You can bet I visited Saturn before giving up the ship. With his rings near edge-on, some would say he isn’t quite his normal spectacular self. He is to me. This is the way I saw Saturn with a telescope for the first time, with my Palomar Junior in 1966. On this night, seeing was good; the shadow of the rings across the disk razor sharp in my 4.7mm Explore Scientific 82° ocular (265x). Coolest thing? Little Enceladus was visible just above the plane of the rings and almost seeming to touch them. 

Fun is fun but done is done. The sky didn’t slam shut; it just faded away as it got damper and damper. I covered the faithful Miss Zelda and headed for the Lodge. I was sad not to be able obey the rule my old friend, Pat, and I established many a long year ago, “No going to bed before M42 is up high enough to fool with,” but there was nothing for it. Shining my flashlight into the air produced a cone that looked like the Bat Signal. 

Sunday morning, Dorothy and I departed before breakfast, wanting to get home and check on the cats. It wasn’t pleasant loading sopping wet gear—it seemed more like the product of a downpour than a dew fall—but our simple field setup meant we were on the road in record time. 

The verdict on DSSG 2025? Attendance was 62, nowhere near what it was in the golden age of the 90s - 2000s but improved over the last years at its previous location. I predict the Deep South Star Gaze is on the way back up and has many more good years ahead of it. Our personal experience? Despite the weather, it was just great, and we plan to be back for 2026, I am also hoping to be at the spring edition of the star party, the 2026 Spring Scrimmage, which will also be held at Feliciana again.

Totals:  17 Down 93 to go…

Nota Bene:  You can see many more pictures in the DSSG 25 Photo Album on Unk's Facebook Page...

 

Before we hit the leading edge of the autumn Messiers, muchachos, let’s get one thing out of the way: Yes, I did see comet Lemon (c/2025 A6). I didn’t observe the visitor in any kind of elaborate fashion, though. I didn’t even give my Richest Field Telescope, Miss Tanya, a shot at it. Weather and my health (I’ve been down with a bad cold/some kind of bronchial infection) impelled me to keep it simple. When I decided I’d better get to the comet before she got into the trees—Lemon is moving south at a good clip, now—I grabbed my beloved Burgess 15x70 binoculars.

These glasses, purchased at the 2003 ALCON in Nashville where I was a speaker, have long been my goto when I want reasonably wide fields, and a little power—both in magnification and light gathering—in a compact, hand-holdable package. They are also high in optical quality, and I simply cannot believe the late Bill Burgess sold them to me for a mere fifty bucks!

Anyhoo, out onto the deck I went. The Moon had waned away, so that was not a factor. The factor was the race between altitude and position. Every day I waited put the comet a little higher in the sky, but every passing day also put it farther to the south. Chaos Manor South’s southwestern sky is almost completely obscured by trees, so, I didn’t wait too long. On my chosen evening, I had to do a little scanning around, but it wasn’t long before I turned up Lemon. At first as just a fuzzy “star.” A little staring, however, revealed a delightful wee tail!

That, friends, was the extent of my adventures with the comet. I didn’t image it, not “even” with a smartscope; I just didn’t feel up to it. I was glad, however, to have seen our visitor from the outer depths and have enjoyed looking at the lovely pictures y’all have taken.

But onto the main course, the next batch of Ms. As I mentioned in the first installment, this time we’ll be taking them on constellation by constellation rather than by numbers. The constellations for this evening are few but lustrous: beautiful Pegasus the Flying Horse and Andromeda the Maiden. They are the heralds of the star pictures of fall and are renowned both for their beauty and for the ease at which they can be picked out even by novice observers.

So, let’s go. The instruments for this bunch? I’d like to say Zelda, my 10-inch Dobsonian, was one of them, but ‘twas not to be. While, as I told you last time, I can still get Z into the backyard safely if I am careful and take it slowly, my Bad Cold meant I didn’t feel up to lugging her sizeable self into the back forty. So, the visual telescope would be my 6-inch SkyWatcher Dob. What’s that? Her name? Let me ask; I haven’t thought to enquire. OK, she’s says, “Patty.” Why Patty, I don’t know. But that is what she said, and a scope should know her own name, shouldn’t she? The imaging telescope? The SeeStar, Suzie, natch. She is really no trouble at all even when I’m not feeling so hot.

Messier 15

There is no doubt globular cluster M15 in Pegasus is a grand sight. One of the best globs in the northern sky. However, that comes with a caveat. In addition to its lovely appearance as a ball of tiny stars, this cluster is famous for its very tight, preternaturally bright core. The cluster isn’t the densest one on the Messier list, but at Shapley-Sawyer Type IV, it’s dense enough, and the brightness of that core (a feeding black hole is thought to lurk there) makes it tough for smaller scopes to resolve. On the plus side, M15 shines at magnitude 6.15, making it at least a near naked eye object from dark sites. It subtends an impressive 18’0” of sky.

The cluster’s discovery history? It is another one not discovered by Chuck Messier himself. The credit goes to Jean-Dominique Maraldi, who spotted a strange, bright fuzzball not far from the prominent star Enif one autumn evening in 1746. That closeness to Enif, “The Horse’s Nose,” both makes it easy to find and gives it its nickname, “The Horse’s Nose Cluster.”

So, to the Horse’s Nose Cluster me and Patty went. What did we see? With a 30mm finding eyepiece in the focuser, what we saw was probably not much different from what Jean-Dominique saw on that Italian evening those long centuries ago: a bright fuzzball with a brighter center. Seeing more required more magnification, and as much as I like Miss Patty, that is not easy for her. Her optics are good, but at 150mm f/5, you need a short focal length ocular. Luckily, I had one, a 4.7mm Explore Scientific wide-field eyepiece (160x) that I won at the last Chiefland Star Party I attended. When I looked into it, I was gratified to see the spray of tiny, tiny stars that surrounds that blazing core.

Famous observer (obviously not moi) impressions? Tonight, we turn to Walter Scott Houston. He’s often described as “the dean of deep sky observers.” So frequently, in fact, that that has come to sound like a cliché. It is nevertheless oh-so-true—and how. What did Scotty have to say about M15 in one of his “Deep-Sky Wonders” columns?

The view of M15 is impressive with anything from binoculars to the largest telescope. My 4-inch Clark refractor at 40x shows M15 as a slightly oval disk, more luminous in the center, with edges just beginning to break up into individual stars. Increasing magnification enhances the view, and at 200x stars at the center of the cluster start to be resolved.

Which is right on the money as far as I am concerned.

Then it was Suzie’s turn. Despite the Seestar smartscope’s 50mm of aperture and 250mm focal length, the girl brought back a very pretty rendition of M15. That said, I need to let my longer focal length Smarty-scope, Evie, the 4-inch Evolution reflector, have a go at M15 before the season is out.

Messier 31

There are few objects in the deep sky I’ve had as much of a love-hate relationship with as M31, the Great Andromeda Galaxy. The hate stems from my disappointment as a young’un with one of the very first deep sky objects I observed. When I finally ran it down, what was in the 1-inch Kellner eyepiece of my 4-inch f/11 Palomar Junior Newtonian? A big, bright blob that pretty much filled the field. Extending southwest to northeast from the blob was a stream of dimmer nebulosity that I guessed represented the galaxy’s disk. What? No spiral arms?! Little Rod expected spiral arms.

Despite M31’s closeness and brightness, it was no wonder I didn’t see spiral structure. This is a huge object, a blazingly bright (magnitude 3.4) SA galaxy that extends across a whopping 3.1 degrees of sky. Not only did its size make it a challenge for my small, long focal length reflector, the galaxy’s rather shallow inclination to us—77°, not edge-on, but not far from it, makes it difficult to detect signs of spiral structure in any telescope. While M31 was first recorded by Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi in his Book of Fixed Stars in the 10^th century, there are apparent references to it going way, way back.

Certainly, as the years rolled by and I acquired more suitable scopes for M31 and learned how to use them, I came to see a lot more in M31. That included the dark lanes that are the signature of spiral arms, a giant star cloud, a tiny near-stellar nucleus, globular clusters, and more. However, most of those sights are reserved for dark sites. What did my 6-inch pick up from the backyard of suburban Chaos Manor South?

There was the blob, naturally, that enormous central bulge that filled my field with milk. I struggled for at least a hint of the compact nucleus but did not see a trace—not surprising, as that is an object that often needs 10-inches and almost always needs a dark sky. The disk? I didn’t expect dust lanes, but wondered if the giant star cloud, NGC 206, that lies 49'0" southwest of the galaxy’s center might be visible. I convinced myself I saw something in the correct position, but that may have been averted imagination. M32 and M110? See below. If I’d been feeling a little better, I’d have popped in the house for those Burgess binoculars, which are a more appropriate instrument for M31 than even a short f/l 6-inch reflector.

Let me say that you can pick a far worse scope for M31 than a 6-inch f/5 at 25x with a 30mm ocular. The problem was the light pollution-scattering haze of autumn that is almost always with us in the weeks before cold fronts begin to clean things out.

Scotty’s thoughts? He just isn’t bullish on Andromeda, remarking that it is often a disappointment. That is certainly true, but I do take issue with his claim that spiral structure “Probably cannot be seen in amateur instruments.” I would say the aforementioned dark lanes are certainly the galaxy showing that spiral structure. He does admit these dark lanes can be seen in modest scopes but does not connect them with “spiral structure.” That quibble aside, yes, Scotty nails it again. Andromeda is more famous for its brightness (I was able to see it with ease as a fuzzy star from the backyard of the original Chaos Manor South downtown) and what it represents, the closest large galaxy to us, than how it looks in the eyepiece.

How did The Suze do with Andromeda? M31 was the first object I essayed after ZWO implemented “mosaic mode” with the Seestars. When you engage that, the scope takes a picture, moves, takes another picture, etc., making it able to frame objects too large even for its short focal length. I was pleased by the results, but found the mosaic business to be a pain, taking hours to complete and often not completing due to the target getting into trees or other obstructions before all the shots were done. Still, it’s a nice tool, and Suzie returned a pretty good Andromeda. The bottom line is that this bright and big and obvious object is much more difficult to image than you would think. 

M32

This little E2 elliptical is the most prominent of Andromeda’s retinue of satellite galaxies. While it’s “only” magnitude 8.2, it’s small, 8’30” x 6’30”, and appears bright indeed. If you’ve successfully located M31, there’s no “finding” to M32; it stands out like a sore thumb about 25’0” south of the core of M31. Visually, it’s just outside the disk of its parent galaxy. Who discovered the little guy? That is attributed to Guillaume Le Gentil in 1749, but I’d guess whoever it was who first turned a telescope to M31 saw M32; it would seem impossible to miss.

For me, M32 has always been, “Yeah, nice, adds to the beauty of M31” and that is about it. There’s just not much to see here; it’s a bright, featureless elliptical that appears completely round. At magnifications of 150x and up, it should be easy to see the center is surrounded by a dimmer envelope and… End of story. Scotty? He has little to say about the elliptical, merely noting that it can sometimes be mistaken for M110.

I didn’t bother to do a separate image of M32; there’s just not much reason to do so. The Seestar’s M31 picture shows the small companion well enough. Frankly, large telescopes and long exposures don’t get you much more with M32. They can show the elliptical’s elongation, but that is about it.

M110

Like M32, M110 is a satellite galaxy of Andromeda, but it is at least a somewhat more interesting one. It’s an E5 with a magnitude of 8.1 like M32, but is considerably larger at 21’54” x 11’0” and looks much dimmer—it can be rendered completely invisible in the suburbs by sky conditions that allow M32 to shine on. It’s also considerably more distant from M31’s center, lying 36’19” to the northwest. The discoverer? Messier never added this elliptical galaxy to his list, though he did include it in drawings he made of M31. In my opinion, then, the credit should go to Caroline Herschel who observed it on August 27, 1783.

As a young observer, I didn’t pay much attention to M110. I just used it as an indicator of how good or bad observing conditions were. Easy in a 4-inch and I was in for some fine views. Doubtful in a 6-inch? Don’t expect much of the deep sky on a night like that. Later, though, especially after I began observing with Stellacam and Mallincam deep sky video cameras, I began to really look at this galaxy. Almost any telescope will show M110 is strongly elongated, but on a good night with a bit of aperture (or a deep sky video camera), I begin to see tantalizing—if fleeting—hints of detail near the center. M110 is an elliptical and there shouldn’t be much in the way of dust/gas to create features, but there is something there, as is witnessed by images taken with large instruments.

Scotty doesn’t have much more to say about M110 than he does about M32, just that it is the next closest satellite galaxy to M31 after M32, the remaining companions being to the north in the Cassiopeia area.  

As for The Suze? She did a rather nice job on M110, as you can see here in this crop from her main M31 images. Maybe I’m fooling myself, but I believe I can see signs of that subdued detail in M110. It’s enough to make me want to turn the Unistellar smartscope loose on M110 some evening.

M33

M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is another object that really fired my imagination as a kid observer. It was obvious to me from pictures that, unlike Andromeda, Triangulum should show spiral arms. Given the galaxy’s inclination angle of 50°, I figured it should be duck soup to see some arms. As I soon discovered after multiple nights observing it in Mama and Daddy’s backyard, ‘tis not so. While this magnitude 5.7 SA galaxy can be spotted with the naked eye from darker sites, that is not an easy task. With a telescope, especially a longer focal length one, M33 is almost as difficult. That magnitude 5.7 light is spread out over an area of 1°08’42” x 0°42’00. I was lucky to see anything at all. The recipe for success if you want spiral arms? Dark skies and a 10 – 12” telescope at f/5 or below.

Historically, while a naked eye object (if only marginally), it does not appear to have been recorded before the age of the telescope. When it was first noticed, it wasn’t by Charles Messier, but by Giovanni Battista Hodierna in/around 1654.

How did me and Miss Patty fare with the Triangulum Galaxy? Not so hotsky. The best we could do on a semi-punk night (because of the haze) was detect a subtle brightening in the field in the correct spot. It wasn’t even clear we were seeing an oval patch of nebulosity, just a generalized hazy something in the field. I tried a UHC light pollution filter in hopes of seeing NGC 604, the enormous complex of nebulosity in one of M33’s arms, but no dice. I have seen the nebula with fair ease with the 10-inch Dobsonian from a site on the edge of the city-country transition zone, but that was on an outstanding night.

As you can imagine, ol’ Scotty has a lot to say about Triangulum—despite my near failure with it on this night it really is one of the premier galaxies for Northern Hemisphere observers. I urge you to read his column “The Great Triangulum Spiral” for yourself, but to sum up, the Old Man mentions both the difficulty some observers experience trying to see even a hint of M33 on the wrong night or with the wrong scope, and his delight at not just having seen the spiral, but of having conquered NGC 604.

The Suzie girl had no problem with M33. The picture she returned impressed me quite a bit. It’s not quite the equal of the M33 I got with one of my APO refractors and my old EQ-6 mount one dark night at the Deer Lick Astronomy Village some years ago, but it’s nice and the color balance is better. And, hell, it was taken on an average night from my bright backyard!

And the Messier road goes ever on. The autumn objects hidden among the subdued stars of the “water” constellations await us. But that’s for another time. The night has grown old, Hercules has plunged into the west, and me and my faithful telescope have covered enough light years for one fall evening.

The Bottom Line:  11 down 99 to go…

Nota Bene:  If you’d like to read Scotty’s “Deep-Sky Wonders” columns, you have a couple of options. If you have access to the original magazines, you’ll find him in just about every issue from 1946 to 1994. Don’t have all those old magazines? If you’re lucky, you glommed onto the Sky & Telescope DVDs that were sold some years ago. These contain the entire run of “Deep-Sky Wonders.” Got neither? You can get an excellent sampling in the compilation volume edited by James O’Meara, Deep-Sky Wonders.

The Passing of a Giant…

I received the shocking news that optical genius Al Nagler, founder of TeleVue, passed away last Sunday, the 27^th of October. Yes, I was shocked. I shouldn’t have been—after all, Al was mortal like all of us and was getting up there in years. But it’s just hard to imagine an astronomy without Nagler. What else is there to say than that Al Nagler was one of the people who didn’t just leave their mark on astronomy but changed it forever. There are two eras in eyepieces, “Before AL” and “After Al.” Nuff said.

 

What’s ol' Unk goin’ on about now? I was thinking the other day—yes, I do that occasionally—about a nice observing project to do (mostly) from my backyard, and figgered it might be a good idea if it were something y’all have at least asked for for a change.

What is that something? Why, the good old Messiers, of course. While they are not always the best of the best in the way of deep sky objects, they are almost always among the best. I never tire of them—never. But didn’t I go through the list just a little while ago? That’s what I thought, muchachos, but when I checked, I found it has been eight years—actually, a little more—since I last strolled through the M list here. I also recalled that when I finished I was a little sad to be done. Apparently y’all were too, since I’ve had periodic requests for more Ms over the intervening years.

So, what’s the plan, Stan? My primary goals are, first, to image every one o’ them Messiers with a smartscope. I want to find out how today’s inexpensive robotic scopes do on the whole-big-thing, the 110 objects we (well, most of us) consider part of the M list today. This time we’ll do them by constellation or groups of constellations, not by their numbers. When will the installments appear? Whenever Unk feels like it.

Secondly, I want see what I think of them visually after 60 years’ of observing these beauties. Most of all, I want to try, best I can, to approach each one as if I were observing it for the first time. No preconceived ideas nor notions. No, “I know there’s a dust lane there, so maybe I did see it this evening.” Whether I’m in the backyard or at a dark site, how does M-umptysquat look to me right now. How good is it, really? Sometimes I’ll draw an object, most of the time I won’t.

What’s on tap as a visual scope? I’d like to say, “Zelda-Zelda-Zelda.” That’s my 10-inch GSO Dobsonian, who is in my opinion of the optimum aperture required for a good look at Messiers from a suburban backyard. I hope to use her frequently but know sometimes the flesh will be weak and smaller scopes will be used for The Messier Project (Gotta have a name, don’t it?). And, of course, for some objects smaller scopes will be appropriate any time.

What else? You don’t need much in the way of observing planning software for “just” the Messiers, but one still helps you decide which constellations/objects are available on any given night. I could use Deep Sky Planner or SkyTools 3, and I probably will use those two super-programs at home. But I hope to do a little star-partying again soon and will want to have a laptop with me.

I prob’ly ain’t gonna lug my humongous and current-hungry Alienware laptop onto an observing field…so…what?  As y’all know, I am a Mac user much of the time now. So, I thought it would be a Good Thing to install a deep sky planning program on my MacBook Air. The one I chose is an old favorite, AstroPlanner.

Paul Rodman’s (very) long-running observing planner is as capable as the others, and I’ve always liked it. So why haven’t I talked about it in a long time? I’d got used to using SkyTools and Deep Sky Planner and stuck with those programs. Neither of them runs on Apple computers, though. Since my power-sipping MacBook is the laptop I’ll take to star parties, I thought AstroPlanner might be just the thing. Assuming it was still around, which I hoped it was.

Well, of course it is, as I soon found out. The only change I could see is that Paul now classifies his astro-ware as shareware, which I believe is a change from the olden days. At any rate, I was gratified to see it works on Apple Silicon Macs. I downloaded a copy and soon had it cranking on my M2 Macintosh. Even better, after a small amount of fiddling around I discovered that, yep, I still knew how to work AstroPlanner! That alone should tell you what a winner it is, since it’s been at least 10 years, and probably more, since I last sat in front of the program.

Planetarium software? Likely, that will be SkySafari running on my iPhone and on the Macintosh. I still use Stellarium; it’s still a fine program and free to use. Ditto Cartes du Ciel. But… I’ve always got SkySafafi on the phone in my pocket, it’s beautiful, and performs very well indeed on the Mac, and…there just ain’t much reason not to use it.

Since one of my goals will be to make portraits of the Messier objects with the smartscopes, I thought I should really take advantage of the new SeeStar equatorial mode. I’d tried it out, and it worked fine, but I knew I could make it work better. Mostly by doing better polar alignments. What I have been doing is just tipping over the pan-head of my Manfrotto tripod. That works, but it is difficult to fine-tune tilt for latitude adjustment. I decided to get a genu-wine equatorial wedge.

The question then became, “Which one?” Several are available that will work with the ZWOs including from ZWO itself, SkyWatcher, iOptron, and several Chinese brands I’d never heard of. After using my share of SkyWatcher (Synta) gear over the years, I figgered theirs was a safe bet and ordered one off’n the Amazon. 

When the wedge arrived, I was rather impressed. It looks nice dressed in SkyWatcher’s current white/green-anodized color scheme. I also noted that a mystery was solved. It does include a 3/8-inch to Vixen dovetail attachment to mount the SeeStar (or other scope) to the wedge. The pictures on Amazon do not show one.

A down-check? The bolt that secures the dovetail to the wedge is a knob-headed one, and the base of the SeeStar will interfere and prevent you from using it. I could see that from the pictures, so before the wedge arrived, I’d hied myself to the Home Depot and got a hex-head M8 bolt to replace it (a bag of two was just a buck or three).

Anyhoo, got out my SkyWatcher Star Adventurer tripod and attached the wedge to the 3/8^th bolt on the tripod, bolted the dovetail to my Suzie-girl, mounted her on the wedge, and was ready to rock after adjusting the tilt of the wedge to roughly 31° using my phone’s gyrocompass utility. Oh, one further down-check, though I guess it don’t amount to much: The wedge’s latitude scale is screwy. Or maybe it ain’t a latitude scale at all...

Before moving the wedge to tilt the scope at the angle of Polaris, I looked at the scale and realized it would read “0°” when pointing straight up, and “90°” when pointed to the horizon. That’s the opposite of how it would be if it were meant to indicate latitude.

Pasted on upside down? Somebody at the Synta factory got confused? Not meant to indicate latitude at all (why not on a wedge fer Chrissakes?)? No big deal, though. If you want to use it to help with rough setup, just remember to subtract your latitude from 90 and set it to that. I adjusted the wedge to 59°, which would be 90 minus my latitude, 31.

When it was time for polar alignment, the SkyWatcher widget showed its value. I’d set the wedge midway between the two push-pull azimuth adjustment bolts (like on an AVX or EQ-6 mount, just smaller) and nudged the tripod to point north using my phone’s compass. After it got dark, it was easy to move the wedge to just the right azimuth for the NCP. Likewise, the smooth latitude adjustment knob made it laughably easy to move in altitude. I achieved the best polar alignment I have ever had with the S50. We was ready to bring home some Ms!

Where will we go for this first night of The Messier Project? Let’s begin with The Great Bird of the Galaxy, Cygnus the Swan. He’s on the meridian in early evening and will soon be sinking into the west as another year dies. Tucked under Big Bird’s wings are the small star figures Vulpecula, The Little Fox, and Sagitta, The Arrow. Also close at hand is the small but distinctive group Lyra, The Lyre. The four bring with them six Messiers, three Real Good Ones, M27, M71, and M57, two in the “OK” camp, M29 and M39, and one in the “also ran” category, M56.

So, it was on a somewhat hazy but clear evening I set out once again on the Messier Road….

NB: My observations were done over the course of several evenings, mostly to dodge clouds. I set aside one visual-only night, but it was plagued by haze—same as the other evenings, but worse—and rising humidity.

Messier 27 (Vulpecula)

Why did I hit M27 first? Simple: it was placed so as to give me an hour or so of imaging time before it was on the Local Meridian, which is not a good place to try imaging an object whether your telescope is mounted in altazimuth or equatorial fashion.

There wasn’t any drama involved in getting Suzie on target. As above, the new wedge made it easy to dial-in alignment. One thing I did do? Two polar alignment iterations. When you click “get alignment error,” the SeeStar does that based on the plate-solved image. But as you adjust in altitude and azimuth, the figures you see are determined by the scope’s level sensors. So, best to mash “get error” a second time when you’ve got it close, let the SeeStar take another image, and dial it in one more time.

And then, I plunked myself down on the couch with the felines and did a little reading and reminiscing about this legendary planetary nebula. The basics?  It was discovered by Charles Messier on the 12th of July 1764. Today, you’d think it would be difficult to mistake for a comet, but remember, Messier was using a very small scope. Also, while he may have begun with “objects that can be mistaken for comets,” almost from the beginning he was putting anything he saw that was weird/interesting in his list, comet-like or not.

Today, the Dumbbell is thought to lie about 1360 light years from this little rock. It’s a planetary nebula, the corpse of a dead solar-mass-range star that has blown off its outer layers. What remains is a beautiful corpse, the green-glowing Dumbbell (it’s always looked more like an apple core to me). There’s also M27’s magnitude 13.8 central star, the cooling core of its progenitor, which is visible in medium-sized scopes. The nebula itself is magnitude 7.4 and 8.0’ across, and obviously not a challenge for small scopes or even binoculars.

What did the man I still consider my Messier guru, John Mallas, think of the ol’ Dumbbell? Obviously, in 60 years more has been learned about this planetary, but the stats John gives are not far off the mark, with the major change being we now know it’s a little farther away than the 1250 light years it was estimated to be in his time. His visual impression of it (in the book he did with Evered Kreimer, The Messier Album) is for the ages:

A superb planetary for low to medium magnifications with small apertures; even the 10-power finder (of Mallas’ 4-inch Unitron) reveals details. Glowing quite greenish, M27 is one of the few planetaries to show vivid color in a small telescope. At low power when the air is not too steady, the Dumbbell may seem three dimensional.

The only thing that puzzles me, then and now about M27’s entry in the book is John Mallas’ drawing of it. It is nothing more than a rectangular smudge that looks nothing like the Dumbbell I’ve seen in any scope or binoculars.

What I saw with my own 4-inch (an Edmund Scientific Palomar Junior reflector; I could only dream about Unitrons) one long-ago evening was pretty much as Mr. Mallas described. Well, almost. I never noted even a hint of green color. But that’s something that requires just the right conditions. Otherwise, it was very nice indeed, showing its Dumbbell shape readily. Yes, it was smaller and far less detailed than the astrophotos in my books, but by the time I hit Vulpecula, Little Rod had learned that would sadly be par for the course.

That was then, how about now? What was M27 like in Zelda 60 years down the amateur astronomy road? On this less than stellar (ahem) visual night, the Apple Core was the best of the night’s catch. On this evening, I preferred its look at 78x in my old Happy Hand Grenade 16mm 100° eyepiece to that in shorter focal length oculars. Surprisingly, it was a little better, I thought, without either a UHC or OIII filter. That was probably due to conditions—usually the UHC is my goto for the Dumbbell.

So, Zelda did well, with her 10-inches bringing out mucho nebulosity. Only "problem"? She has enough light-gathering power to make the Dumbbell shape fade away. I was mostly seeing a football-like oval of nebulosity. Under these conditions, I could not make out the brighter bar of nebulosity that extends diagonally across the object. Nor could I see the slightest hint of green. The nebula was uniformly gray.

Suze acquitted herself nicely. I was a little worried about the high altitude of her target, but she only dropped one frame over the course of 45 minutes. I could no doubt further enhance the red “edging” of the apple core with post-processing with Siril, etc., but you know what? I kinda like what came out of Suzie (albeit with AI denoise applied) just as it is.

M39

As a kid, I thought this open cluster was the height of “ho-hum.” Has my opinion changed over the years? Let’s see... Anyhow, it was discovered a long time before Charles Messier began his sky adventures, having been recorded by Aristotle in 325 BC. Chuck paid it a visit on 24 October 1764 and added it to his list. What it is is a bright, large, loose open cluster shining with a combined magnitude of 4.6 and covering a whopping 31.0’ of sky. Pretty obviously, there’s no way Messier mistook it for a comet.

If there’s something to be said against this lovely group, the Arrowhead Cluster (Wikipedia refers to it as the Pyramid Cluster, but I’ve never heard anybody actually call it that), it is that it’s just so large, 31.0’ across. Back in the supposedly glorious Day, most of us were using telescopes, large or small, with relatively long focal lengths, and eyepieces with narrow—often very narrow—fields. Put a 31’ cluster in a 30’ field, and you’ll see what John Mallas saw.  After praising the cluster’s appearance in binoculars, he goes on to say, “M39 is less impressive in the limited field of the 4-inch.” And so it was in my Palomar Junior.

On this night in Zelda, M39 was and was not a disappointment. 1250mm is a bit much for looking at this big galactic cluster, of course. But it wasn’t bad even so. What was in my ocular was three bright stars arranged in a near-equilateral triangle shape filled with 30-40 dimmer suns. However, the cluster just barely fit in the 16mm’s big field. I said, “Waaaalll we’ll fix that!” and snatched my good, old 35mm Panoptic out of the eyepiece case. No dice, y’all, no dice. The Pan’s lower magnification made the field way too bright on what was turning into a rather icky night.

Suzie’s image? OK. The Arrowhead could have stood considerably more field than what Suze delivers, but the S50 is what I had in the backyard, the night was growing old, and lazy Unk, wisely perhaps, stuck with what was set up and working.

M29

As a young observer, I was every bit as dismissive of M29 as I was of M39. Why? I’m not completely sure. The cluster’s stats certainly don’t tell the tale. M29, which first appeared in the field of Messier’s small scope on a summer Paris evening in 1764, shines at magnitude 6.6, and is a mere 10.0’ across. You’d think that would be just about perfect for a 4-inch f/11 Newtonian. No sir buddy, I didn’t like it. As for Mallas, he found it to be attractive in his finder scope but not so much in the main instrument.

In Zelda M29 was, I fear, not lookin’ so hot, either. The cluster itself was nice, showing off its little dipper shape very well. There are eight prominent members with a few dimmer stars scattered among them. However, even in the 13mm Ethos, which I’d switched the ‘Grenade out for in hopes of darkening the field a bit, the scads of dim stars that make the cluster’s field so lovely were mostly missing. On the other hand, not having the distraction of all them stars, sure made Messier 29 pop out.

As for the Seestar? I have nothing to complain about with the image that appeared on my iPhone. I could have given it more than 15 minutes and brought out more field stars, I reckon, but I’m not sure that would have been good thing. As is, the little dipper-shaped group stands out better than it usually does in astrophotos.

M57

If M27 is a famous planetary nebula, M57, The Ring Nebula, is the famous planetary nebula. I know that as a beginning observer of the night sky, pictures of the Ring were one of the things that fired my imagination along with images of beautiful spiral galaxies. Best of all, for once, an object I admired in books wasn’t hard with my small scope.

M57 was discovered not by Messier, but by another French astronomer, Antoine Darquier, in 1779. It is 1.3’ across, and thanks to that relatively small size remains bright at magnitude of 9.7. I liked it in my Pal Junior. I liked it a lot, even though it was smaller than I thought it would be in my ½ inch focal length Ramsden eyepiece. Still, I judged this one “cool.” Mallas? He oddly calls it a “challenge” for the visual observer. Well, maybe it is if you’re after details including the notoriously difficult central star, but otherwise this is a showpiece for smaller instruments.

Like M27, the Ring was surprisingly good visually under the poor conditions. In fact, its small—but not too small in the 13mm Ethos—disk looked amazing in soup that was getting thicker and thicker. In a 10-inch class instrument, it’s easy to see the ring is elongated, that the center is not dark, and that there are brightness variations across the ring. Howzabout the central star? I have seen it in a 10-inch on a night perfect for that pursuit, but there wasn’t a prayer on this sticky Tuesday’s eve’.

I let Suzie have a brief go at the Ring, but it is just too small an object for her short focal length. The planetary is much better in another Chaos Manor South roboscope, Evie, the Unistellar Equinox, a 4-inch reflector. She did a nice job, but underexposure by me (I’m still learning the scope) meant the central star didn’t stand out like I wanted it too. Here, in a shot from last season, it’s maybe overexposed, but I dang sure did bring out the central star.

Messier 56 (Lyra)

The next stop on my sightseeing tour was the subdued globular cluster M56 over in Lyra. It was already across the meridian and would be a good Suzie target. This is another object actually discovered by good, old Chuck. On 19 January 1779, he found a smudge in the field of his scope. You can bet his small refractor didn’t come close to resolving it, and he put it down as a possible comet. However, coming back some nights later, it hadn’t moved and M56 went into his Big List. This was just the sort of thing he’d had in mind when he started the catalog.   

I’d be a-lyin’ if I were to tell y’all I was excited by the prospect of visiting Lyra’s oft-overlooked globular cluster. Why? It’s surprisingly difficult from the suburbs. When I was a kid running down the Messiers for the first time, I figgered logging M56 would be like shootin’ those proverbial fish in a barrel. It was a glob, and it was magnitude 8 and 8.0’ across. How hard could it be? Oh, brother was li’l Rod in for a surprise! It wasn’t there. I looked and looked with my Pal. Night after night—nada. Finally, I spotted the dimmest of glows in the field on a superior evening. Why so dim?

The problem is M56 is quite loose. It is a X (10) on the famous Shapley-Sawyer scale. For comparison, the devilish little NGC 5053 is a XII. That means M56 is almost as bad. Our old pal M2, in contrast, is a II. M13 is a V. So, what you have is a cloud—almost like an open cluster—of dim and distant globular stars. That makes M56 tough. I’ve found that for a nice visual look, a 10 – 12-inch under country skies is desirable.

Referring to The Messier Album, I’m surprised about what John says: “An impressive object. In a 4-inch refractor, M56 is a bright, nearly circular glow in which a few individual stars are seen.” I’m not sure exactly where he did the observing for the book, but for M56 to show stars in a freaking 4-inch, it must have been awful dark. What was it like in a 10-inch under hazy suburban skies?

On some nights, M56 has surprised me, but I wasn’t sure this would be one of those nights. As I keep sayin’, HAZY, which is typical for our early autumns. Some days the humidity is a little lower now, sometimes it is a little higher. But “lower” will still be 50 something percent, and tonight was tending toward "higher" with a vengeance. Anyhow, tracked the little glob down with Astro-Hopper, inserted my Happy Hand Grenade 100-degree 16mm eyepiece and put my eye to the ocular. What was in that huge spaceship porthole FOV?

Geez Louise, the answer is “not much.” I re-aligned Astro-Hopper on a nearby star, Albireo, because I wasn’t sure we were on the proper field. After considerable eye-straining and ocular switching, I finally noticed a dull glow in the field, and that was it. Higher magnification didn’t help, nor did lower. And no wonder, I’d had to use Zelda’s 50mm finder to locate Albireo so I could align on it. The normally prominent star was almost invisible with my eyes and Rigel Quick Finder. Frankly, it appeared the heavens were now well on their way to “considerably worse” in advance of a storm font predicted to arrive the following day.

Image wise, Suzie had no trouble with this sprite despite being limited to a half-hour. Her shot is not unlike the one Kreimer captured with his immense Cave Newtonian and cold camera for the Album all those decades ago. That is, a bright(ish) core, a fairly good spray of stars around the core, and, overall, an OK-looking globular star cluster.

Messier 71

After the awe-inspiring (ahem) M56, I was ready for a treat. Over we went to little Sagitta, the arrow clasped in one of the Great Bird of the Galaxy’s talons. Given M71’s Shapley-Sawyer Class, again X, this should be another punishing one, but it is not. In fact, it is easy for almost any telescope on any decent evening. Mallas is right on the money when he says, “A beautiful sight even in Mallas’ 10 x 40 finder.”

M71 is another Messier object not actually discovered by Messier but only cataloged by him (he did observe it). The discovery bragging rights go to Swiss astronomer Philippe de Cheseaux. Anyhow, it is a magnitude 8.4, 7.2’ across clump of Suns. Yep, clump. The stars appear brighter than those of M56 (it is about 13,000 light years out compared to 33,000 for M56), but it looks decidedly less globular-like. In fact, what it looks like is M11, the Wild Duck (galactic) cluster.

This galactic/open appearance caused a lot of debate for years. Was it a globular cluster or was it actually an open cluster? Surprisingly, the talk went on for a long while, until the 1940s, when somebody finally decided it might be a good idea to look at the cluster’s color-magnitude diagram. When you do, it’s, “Say, this thing is a globular cluster!” I’m embarrassed to say that some amateur astronomy books continued to question its status for decades thereafter.

With M71, I was ready for that much-desired Something Nice in the 10-inch’s eyepiece. Was I disappointed? Yes I was. The sky was now even worse than it had been during me and Zelda’s visit to M56. Oh, I could see a small clump of stars that was (I assumed) Messier 71, but the normally amazing field of the cluster was on the barren side this evening.

Little Suze did another right good job with M71 despite the fact lazy old Unk only gave her 15 minutes on the cluster. Her portrait does a fine job of showing off the glob’s “arrowhead”/M11 look. Anyhoo, the first bunch of Ms in the bag, I was ready to call it a night despite the fact Suzie-girl’s battery still had plenty of juice left. Yes, I know you can use a cell phone charging battery to power the little scope for a long while, but she has always outlasted me. Out to the scope, removed her dewshield, shut her down, waltzed her inside, and called it a night, and what a night it was—the Messiers are just fun.

I had finished the evening’s list, and by this time, near midnight, I was sweating and everything—eyeglasses, finder, oculars, even Zelda’s secondary—was fogging up. Her tube was wet with dew, and I had that yucky damp feeling that always impels me to pull that metaphorical BIG SWITCH. I covered Z, lugged the eyepiece case (which seems much heavier than it used despite me not having added a new eyepiece in about eight years) and headed to the den for Yell and YouTube with the felines before it was sign-off time.

The Bottom Line:  6 down 104 to go…

Where is M13?

I mentioned this program years ago. It was a good one; having been useful to me as an astronomy educator. What’s it do? Among other things, it can show you where deep sky objects are in relation to the Sun. Imagine my surprise to find it is still around and better than ever, now going by the moniker Our Galaxy. It has many more features than before, and I find it very nice to be able to get some perspective on where those Messiers are in the galaxy (or outside it).