The trials of midweek amateur astronomy on the front step...
Found a faint nebulous area just down a bit from Saturn tonight, just beside Sagittarius.
(by the time I got out at 2245 Sagittarius was already over into the Western sky, still high, but already "upside down" to how I usually visualise the "teapot")
Obviously this was either M8 (the Lagoon Nebula) or M20 (the Triffid nebula). I'm not really familiar with either through Dobby, and it was hard enough just finding that faint patch, so without being able to find the other nebula, I'm not sure what this one is.
Finding it was not easy. It's a moonless night, and the transparency is great and the seeing not bad. Started with a look at Mars, and no matter what eyepiece I used, Mars is still looking washy. Cranked up to near max magnification with the Barlow and my 13mm ep, but still was unable to make out any surface detail. The seeing was not quite good enough to hold still at that magnification.
Moved over to Saturn next and it is looking pretty good! It always does. Couldn't see any moons. The rings are still quite open and providing a great view.
Then I started looking around for the nebulae. I studied the star maps a few weeks ago, but that was with Sagittarius higher in the sky and the other way around, so I was having to remember it, flip it, rotate a bit, and then hope the damn tree wasn't in the way. Scanning around in the area with my 25mm ep on the Barlow turned up the faint nebulousity. It was roughly regular, so I'm guessing it was the Triffid Nebula, but when I looked a bit further afield to find the other nebula, I couldn't. I assume it was washed out by the light pollution, but that leaves unsure of which one I was looking at and how much of it I could see.
And that was it for that night. Had to get to bed, so packed up with at least a new nebula on the list. With a bit more time I'll nail it down, so feeling good about that.
