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Seeing M22 from the urban twilight zone
Hello, everyone.
Last night I had a very pleasant observing session with my Sky-Watcher 20cm (7.9") f/6 Dob in what might be called the "Urban Twilight Zone," since, as Tony Flanders has remarked, a light-polluted urban site (here about mag 3.5) in effect remains in astronomical twilight through the night. When I started around 1940 or so PDT, the sky was blue; but within ten minutes, looking through the Dob with my 30mm eyepiece, stars started coming up -- rapidly! By 1951 or so, I was observing M25, at what I later realized was almost precisely its transit. A highlight of the evening was seeing a real "faint fuzzy" in Sagittarius, a patch or smudge of approximately circular shape a bit brighter than the background, maybe 10' across. It was lovely, quite ethereal, and at first I thought it might almost be a cloud. However, after this spotting at 2008, I saw it again at 2037 in the same relation to the same asterisms, and my sketch (2 degree field, 40X) nicely matched what fchart showed for M22. At least from my urban observatory, M22 indeed fits a classic concept of a faint fuzzy: something not too far from the limit of visual detection, but most awesome to have detected. Most appreciatively, Margo Schulter Lat. 38.566 Long. -121.430 |
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Seeing M22 from the urban twilight zone
Margo was saying
It was lovely, quite ethereal, and at first I thought it might almost be a cloud. Nice report! It reminds me of my first experience with the Pleiades. When I was a kid growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, I got into the habit of taking late night walks. The first time I ever noticed the Pleiades, I thought they were a tiny puff of smoke that was oddly "cohesive" or something, (it must not have been the greatest night,) but soon I realized I was looking at a group of tiny stars. My personal name for them was "Nebraska," due to the general shape of the cluster. Later, when I was learning my way around the "real" constellations, I memorized a picture of the Pleiades from Menzel's "Peterson's Field Guide," and took a look at them with my father's 7x35 binoculars. BANG! I've been hooked ever since... Marty |
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