Objects in Hercules: The Leckenby List Begins

.....The constellation of Hercules is pretty large, sprawling through a fairly dim part of the sky, and it contains of number of excellent deep-sky views. Four of these make good targets even in the light-polluted skies that most of America now has. Two of these appear on Charles Messier's list of Messier Objects, one is a fairly obscure open cluster, and one is a planetary nebula.

.....Let me take a moment to look on the catalogs that we are using. The two globular clusters (the first among many, many of these types of clusters visible during the summer) are best known by their Messier designations, although there a lot of catalogs in astronomy because, hey, there's a lot of stuff. If some new object is identified, generally it is listed in the next catalog instead of bringing the old one up to date (the Messier Catalog itself is an exception to this). The Great Cluster in Hercules is known as M13, NGC 6205, GCI 45, 2MASX J16414163+3627407 (what it gains in precision it loses in convenience), and now (at least as far as this blog is concerned), L1.

.....There are, clearly, many different catalogs. Why add one more? What possible use could this "Leckenby List" be? When I first started observing, in seventh grade, with a "telescope" on a tripod that I had to balance on the bar of our chain link fence, I tried to use the Messier Catalog as a guide for objects to find. After all, most of the bright objects in the sky are in the catalog, but not all of them are. I wanted to set up a list that had all the cool things that one could find with a small, suburban telescope, and the Messier Catalog left stuff off that list. There is another Catalog that is of recent vintage, the Caldwell-Moore Catalog, set up to include cool things that Messier left out, but like the Messier Catalog, that also includes objects that are too faint, or too diffuse to be seen in light-polluted skies. The Leckenby List will try to include interesting things that can be seen by a fairly new observer on a perhaps somewhat sketchy night. That's my goal.

.....Globular clusters are actually outside of the disk of our galaxy (while they do orbit the center of the Milky Way), and they consist of some of the oldest stars we can see, forming before the stars in the disk of the Milky Way began to collect.

M 13 or L1

..... The Great Hersules Cluster is one of the two best globular clusters as seen from the continental United States. (If anyone is reading this from southern Florida or Texas, please don't bring uop the much larger and brighter globular cluster Omega Centauri. Thanks.) Tghe Great Hercules Cluster has more than three hundred thousand stars, and it so large that light takes more than 130 years to pass from one edge of the cluster to the opposite edge. It is only that the cluster is at a distance of 23,400 light years that keeps it from appearing even more impressive. M13 is fairly easy to find. Looking at the keystone of Hercules, start with zeta Herculis, one of the stars at Hercules' waist, and scan north. When you are most of the way to eta Herculis, the Hercules Cluster will appear as a fuzzy spot between two stars that sppear brighter than their neighbors. M13/L1 is visible even in bionoculars, which is one reason why I have included it as the first object on the Leckenby List.


As seen in a small telescope, M13/L1 appears as a tight ball of stars, with the stars near the edge (where the density of stars starts to thin out) clearly resolvable as indivindual stars, while the stars near the center blur together). To my view, there are a couple of "arms" of stars that appear a little denser than the other areas (although to be fair, photographs show the stars as pretty uniformly distributed). I would be very interested if there were anyone else out there who had an opinion on whether their own observations showed anything like this.





M92


M92 is the other Messier Object in Hercules, and it is also a globular cluster. This can be found fairly easily by starting at the northeast corner of the keystone. If you are looking at this star in binoculars or in a telescope's finderscope, you will see two stars next to pi Herculis, and a set of bright (in binoculars) stars forming an asterism that I christen "the l'il kid" reaching up above his/her head (the existing stars in the star pattern prevent a greater level of detail in the gender of the figure) for the asterism that I name the "Trademarked Fying Disk Toy" (I don't want to get sued), and abovve that, M92 as a ball, these two objects apparently stuck on an invisible roof that the l'il kid just can't reach.

.....Sadly, I haven't observed M92 nearly as much as M13/L1, so I have less of an idea of it's individual observing character. M92 is about two-thirds the apparent size of M13/L1, while only being a little (comparatively) farther away

DoDz 9

.....The next object to look at is a small cluster labeled as Dolidze-Dzimselejsvili 9 is a group of about fifteen stars. Honestly, I do not know if this is an actual cluster of stars that all formed together, or if this is just how it appears. Even the name does not help that much because the DoDz list only has nine objects on it, and the list itself is pretty obscure. Start with the end of Hercules' western arm, and even binolculars should show you this cluster (I think).

.....This is my diagram of this cluster, and I couldn't find a photo or setailed chart to let me know if I was even looking at the right stars. Does someone else have a take on this?

NGC 6210

.....The fourth object is NGC 6210, deriving its lovely, poetic, name from the New General Catalogfrom the 1840's, so called because it replaced the "General Catalog of the 1820's. So there. Nebulae of all types are often hard to see from suburbia as light that is smeared across the sky can be more easily drowned out by the local Wal-Mart (sadly, there's always a local Wal-Mart) that light concentrated into points (stars). Planetary nebula are even more rare because they are the bubbles of ejected gas given off by stars around the same mass as the Sun as those stars finally go the Great Retirement Home in the sky (which is, at least, actually in the sky). These bubbles are often round, as soap bubbles are, and this round(ish) appearance gave them the name "planetary nebulae".

.....I have a finder map for this object that do not have the constellation lines on it because those lines can interfere with finding the object. If you can start from beta Herculis, you should be able to star hop to the nebula, although I don't have .

If you can get to where NGC 6210 shoul be, it should be observable as a small but distinct blue ring, the light concentrated enough to be bright enough to see and just large enough to be identified as a planetary nebula.

July Sky

.....While I work on the observing maps for some deep sky objects, I don't want to miss the forest for the trees, and so here is a sky map for July. (Constellations that have been discussed on this blog are in blue, and constellations I have not gotten too yet are in red.)

.....The Big Dipper is still in the sky, as it will always be in the sky from the northern US, but some constellations that you can find from the Big Dipper (Boötes and Virgo) are moving off to the west. In the east we can find the Summer Triangle, built using three of the brightest stars in the sky. This set of stars (despite its name) will be in the sky until early winter.

.....This map only includes stars brighter than fourth magnitude, so some stars in the constellations are "missing". If you are just learning the constellations, or if you are viewing from a light-polluted sky, I hope that this will be a better way to find the brighter stars.

.....Start making plans now for the Perseid Meteor Shower! Peaking on the nights of August 11th and 12th, this meteor shower can result in dozens of meteors an hour! This year, the Moon will be out of the sky on these nights, so the sky will be at its darkest. This will hopefully be a great year for the shower!