Managed some scope time last night and took a look at our May monthly target.
I have seen
NGC 5139 on more occasions than I care to mention, it is one of those "must see if it's up targets".
Orion XT8
25mm(X48) eyepiece.
Moon at 70% illumination.
NGC 5139, Globular Cluster in Centaurus, Magnitude +3.68
I can see this
GC as a dim star naked eye and so it is easy to get the finder scope spot on it.
It's hard to explain the massive size and number of stars, I took a screen shot from SkySafari to try and illustrate the view in a 20mm(X48) eyepiece.
The core of this
GC is very bright and it's possible to resolve stars all the way to the core, it is also surrounded by quite a few bright foreground or background stars.
Using the 9mm(X133) your
FOV is filled with millions of tiny suns! Many more are resolved and one gets the feeling there are many more.
At the core of this
GC the suns are only 0.1 light years apart.
Another interesting bit of info, it is thought Kapteyn's star is from this cluster, the star has a high proper motion of 8 arc seconds per year, it is currently in the constellation Pictor.
See more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapteyn%27s_Star
Thanks for reading!
Also have a further report on other targets here:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=9591
