2022 June 1

Deep Sky Update – May 2022

Callum Potter

Just a short update this month – as some of you know I have retired and we are planning on moving to the Orkney Islands, and this has been taking up a lot of time.

Deep Sky Notes

I hope you found Richard Sargent’s DSN #1 on V347 Aur interesting- will be a good target to follow up on in the Autumn when Auriga becomes observable again.

This month I have just published DSN #2, from Grant Privett entitled “Going Deep – In Pursuit of Z=5” – remember you will need to be logged in to read the full article.

Further contributions to the DSN series would be very welcome.

May Object of Interest

Just had reports from three observers of Picot 1 (Mark Fairfax, Alan Thomas & Brad Thomas). These can be seen on the OOI webpage
There will be chances to find this OOI over the next few weeks, so if you did not get an opportunity in May still give it a go.

June Object of Interest

It is a bit of a challenge to pick objects over the bright summer months, but for June I have selected a ‘bright’ planetary nebula in Hercules, NGC 6210. Many objects in Hercules get overlooked in favour of its spectacular globular cluster M13, but this one is well worth hunting down. Being compact and blue hopefully you will be able to pick up even in the brighter June skies. Visually it is probably about 20 arc-seconds in diameter, and shines at magnitude 9.7. There is a 12th magnitude central star that should not be too hard to pick up. Visual observers note its blue colour describing it as ‘bluish’ and ‘very blue’ [1].

RA 16h 44m 29.52s
Declination +23° 47′ 59.49″

Good luck – and I’ll be pleased to receive any observations, or put your images on your Members Album.

Postscript: Stewart Moore reminds me that his April JBAA article was about NGC 6210 which you can read here. Lots of really useful and interesting information. (Apologies to Stewart for not remembering this).

And finally

I hope you enjoy the long bank holiday weekend – and maybe there will be some chance to get out under the stars.

Clear, dark skies
Callum

[1] Webb Society Deep-Sky Observer’s Handbook Volume 2: Planetary and Gaseous Nebulae ↩