Three Messiers: Tiny, Dim and an Easy But Foggy One
When my wife is away I often sleep poorly, I wake up in the middle of the night and I can’t get back to sleep. One obvious advantage is that this can be some prime observing time! I knew this would happen so I planned out a few Messier object to grab and had my gear all ready by the door. If I woke I could be outside, completely dark adapted, in just minutes.
I woke at 2:30 and went into the backyard. The sky was crystal clear. When I lifted my binoculars to my eyes and scanned around some I was amazed at just how many stars there were. I live in with very good skies but I often have to deal with brief flashes of white light from car headlights, so consequently I rarely get fully dark adapted. The difference is stunning.
My first target was the old telescope favorite M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra. This is normally a pretty easy Messier object, it isn’t all the dim, it is easy to find, and its ringed appearance is unmistakable. However, with only 50mm of aperture and 15x magnification, I was in for a challenge.
I knew I’d see it, and actually I thought I spotted it almost immediatly. I thought I saw a dim, non-stellar object in the right spot. But when I went to confirm it against the detail star charts on my Palm running Astromist, I wasn’t so sure. I eventually got out my magnifying glass and really examined the charts, and the back to the sky, then back to the charts over and over again. I finally convinced myself that I was seeing it and I was also almost certain that it was the same object I initially saw. I guess I should go with my first instinct sometimes!
Next was M102. I was completely unfamiliar with this one but the spreadsheet that I had prepared awhile back said that it should be an object visible now. So I went to the index, looked up galaxies, open clusters, nebula, globulars. It wasn’t there! Then I remembered. It is one of the controversial Messier objects and Sky and Telescope has decided that it isn’t a real Messier. I guess they are allowed to do that, since that is essentially what controversial means, that people disagree. But I found it extremely annoying that here I was in the field with a field guide and it wasn’t helping me. Anyway, there is a wonderful writeup on the controversy over on the seds.org site. Most sources that I read believe that M102 is the same object as NGC 5866. (The other candidate is M101.) NGC 5866 is an edge-on lenticular galaxy, which is a new type for me. I didn’t know what one was until I just looked it up now! It was also a fairly easy grab once I oriented myself to the dim constellation Draco. I used the Little Dipper and turned the sky chart to match the sky.
Next on my list was M5, a honking bright globular. It lies between Virgo and Serpens Caput so I headed out to the front yard. Uh oh! I’ve never observed this area when Virgo is setting. I was all turned around and backwards and completely disoriented. I really needed my Planisphere but I didn’t have it with me and I didn’t want to go inside to turn on a light to locate it! But Astromist was able to help me, by using various levels of zoom on its Horizon View mode I could make out just where Spica was in relation to the charts. That was the frustrating part. I could see Spica as plain as anything, but I could match the sky to the chart. This took me a good 15 minutes it seemed and now the sky was hazing up fast. (This happens in the Outer Cape a lot.) But still, I knew M5 was bright and even though I could barely see my pointer stars with the naked eye I was able to hop down with the binoculars and I made the grab in the haze. This certainly wouldn’t have worked with any dim object.
I spent about an hour outside on three objects that all presented some unusual difficulties. I was quite surprised about how disoriented I was with Virgo setting. I need to work on that. But in any case, I’m glad I made the grabs. I’m especially glad that I have now found 98 Messiers with my Canon 15×50IS binoculars.