Tonight there was a brief break in the cloud and rain and the skies cleared beautifully. So I decided to get out the back and have a crack at spotting comet Siding Springs.
Well, even with the laptop out beside the telescope I couldn't make out the comet. I'm sure I was in the right part of the sky - drawing a line up from the pointers Rigel Kent and Hadar and bringing a line across from Girtab and Shaula in the tail of Scorpio and then scanning around in the space up and to the left of where they intersect.
I did, however, spot a beautiful Cluster that I hadn't tried looking for before. I'm fairly certain it was NGC 6752. It looked like this (only smaller and with not as many stars visible in the conditions)...
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| Photo credit: The Celestron forum. By Andrew Bray |
One day I'll be able to take pictures like that.
That was a nice treat that made the effort worthwhile. Still want to spot that damn comet, though.
