2024 August 4

Deep Sky Update – July 2024

Callum Potter

Clear nights have been few and far between, but there were a couple of nice displays of noctilucent clouds. And the season is now open for auroral displays with some Orkney observers recording them on the night of 31 July / 1 August – a record for these parts I understand.

There has been progress on the observatory front – the pier is now in place and last week I had a dark enough night to check it for polar alignment, so it just needs to be secured for which I just need to borrow a big drill!

I have taken the plunge and am now the proud owner of a Seestar S50. I have not had a chance to use it on deep sky targets, but was lucky enough to capture the Sun on the 1st of August, otherwise it was just looking at distant fields and cliffs. Hopefully I’ll be able to make some night time observations with it before too long.

I was saddened to hear that Wil Tirion had passed away. The second sky atlas I ever purchased was a desk edition of Tirion’s Sky Atlas 2000 and served me well for many years. My first, incidentally, was a 1950 epoch edition of Norton’s Star Atlas with the charts on thick paper which were much superior to the Norton’s 2000. Like many, I expect, I have a small collection of star atlases, but today my goto atlas is the Interstellarum which I think must have been greatly inspired by Tirion’s works.

Deep Sky Webinar

I have pencilled in the evening of Thursday October 17th for a Deep Sky Webinar. I am hoping to get a professional astronomer to speak for part of the evening, and if there are any members who would also like to speak, please let me know.

Deep Sky Annual Meeting 2025

The Section annual meeting next year will be held on Saturday March 22. Macclesfield Astronomical Society have kindly agreed to host the meeting, which will be held in Goostrey Village Hall, Goostrey, just a stone’s throw away from Jodrell Bank. I am looking into speakers for the event, so if anyone would like a spot please let me know.

July Object of Interest – NGC 6760

The globular cluster NGC 6760 in Aquilla was the target for June. Jim Latham reported observing it with his 14” Newtonian, but found it rather difficult to find in the starry milky-way field and the light night. I managed a reasonable fist of an image using an iTelescope in Utah, and other members capturing it were: Ivan Walton, Carl Hansen, Nicholas Freeman, Fred Stevenson and Alan Thomas. Fred used a Seestar S50 for this image, and it’s great to see observations from him again.

Object of Interest for August

I am sticking with Aquila for the August target – this time a planetary nebula NGC 6772. It is small at about 1 arc-minute diameter, but should not be too hard for moderate size telescopes in good skies.

Picture of the Month

For this month some dark nebulae in Ophiuchus taken by David Strange using a Canon 6D and a 70mm lens. The Dark Horse Nebula is comprised of Barnard 77 , Barnard 78, Barnard 59, The Snake Nebula (Barnard 72) and Barnard 68

And Finally

I’m looking forward to the dark nights returning mid-month here in Orkney. I am sure many of you will already be seeing better darker skies, so good observing.

Clear, dark, skies,
Callum