A challenge lay ahead of me in the form of
The
The field of view showed two stars. I pulled my observing hoodie way over my head and began a minutes-long exercise to get my eye used to the dark.
Just off center of my field of view, with averted vision, there was seemingly an asterisk at 100X. At first, I did not pay enough attention to it. After a while and at higher magnification of 150X, I noticed something special about it. It was less sharply delineated than a normal star, contrast with adjacent universe was lower than for a star. Many times less brilliant. After a while I realized I was looking at the core of NGC4216! With averted vision of course.
Orientation of light around it I could not determine. However, I did see that there was something of light around it, not coming from one star, too much also for one small star. And so it remained an unusual somewhat blurred peripherally observable phenomenon with star-like core, even at higher magnifications. The designation "Star-like core" is perhaps too much honor for the faint speck. But it was there!
Satisfied, I turned the telescope to other small challenges here in town M 104, the Sombrero also in Virgo, M51 in Canes Venatici, with a side trip to the bright M 94 and M63, both also galaxies.
As Summer was approaching low in the East, I could not resist visiting a row of summer globulars. Because of its altitude above my head, M3 in Bootes won the contest. I could see individual stars in it with ease. M13 and M92 in Hercules came right behind it. While M13 was larger and quite impressive, its low position near the horizon caused it to lose the contest. I guess we'll have a different result in a few months. The ever-forgotten little but cuddly globular cluster
Then a quick look at a planetary nebula NGC6210, the Turtle with immediately attached a trip to binary star SAO 84572, which is in one low power field. The turtle looks a bit square, quite bright, lends itself to super-high magnification. Nice little thing. The binary star was just barely separated with a separation of 1.2 arc seconds. Another high magnification object.
Then I decided to clean up. When I got up I could see Vega over the hedge to the east. Oh..... "even more summer"...I thought, while shivering from the cold. The Ring Nebula M57 immediately came to mind. And well, why not?
I wanted to see it with the new eyepiece I got for my birthday. A 30mm APM with 80 degrees field of view...., so a real field of view in the sky of 2.6 degrees. Distortions at the edge, ok, it's not a Nagler.
I remembered the laborious star hop to M57 in my youth, from Sheliak, with all those triangles of faint stars. In a field of view far too small. Took me several sessions to notice M57 in the urban skies. This eyepiece with this telescope showed it at a glance. What a magnificent field of stars, with the Ring Nebula near the middle as the icing on the cake! The command "Sketch!" flew through my head ( while with
Sheliak is the bright star in the left upper corner of the sketch, the Ringnebula M57 in the middle. Notice the triangles from Sheliak to M57.
