The aim was not beautiful deep sky images but as many as interesting objects as possible, for I was simply worried that if the wet condition was ever to continue for another month, I would gonna miss some very interesting objects of the season in their prime show times.
Some of the easy targets in the Bortle 8-9 sky are binary or multiple star systems. The 115mm aperture of my APO did not resolve the challenging binary star Zeta Her -- the shear contrast of magnitude (m2.8 vs m5.5) and the tiny angular distance (<1.5") when combined with the turbulent atmosphere made me decide to give it a pass.
Other binary/multiple stars were resolved well, even under smaller angular separation. I tried different filters among R, G, B. Not surprisingly, the photographs through B produced the best defined star images.
Epsilon Bootis. The first differaction rings are visible for both the primary and the companion stars (although the latter needs a closer view)
Ksi Sco. A very interesting multi star system. And I just could only put the tri-star in the view, leaving the physically linked but largely separated pair out. The multiple diffraction rings are easily visible.
Nu Sco is a splendid multiple star system. There are 7 stars in the system. But some of them are too close to be resolved, leaving an interesting pattern of four apparent stars.
I have also started a project to capture the nearest stars and if possible, the brightest brown dwarfs.
A problem with nearby stars is that they tend to have high proper motion.
Today's target was Barnard star. It is known for the highest proper motion.
In the case of Barnard star, I refer to http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-i ... =submit+id
Here goes the data
ICRS coord. (ep=J2000) : 17 57 48.4997994034 +04 41 36.111354228 (Optical)
Proper motions mas/yr : -802.803 10362.542
For early July 2020, the number of years from J2000 is simply 20.5. And you can derive the predicted position
17h57h47.402 and +04 45 08.53
But the astrometric J2000 coordinates given by CDC is: RA: 17h57m47.397s DE:+04°45'07.51"
The measured J2000 coordinates from plate solving: RA: 17h57m47.293s DE: +04°45'11.60"
I understood there are different J2000 coordinates but I did not bother to sort them out. Anyway, my measured coordinates are off by 4" in DEC.
This is a little annoying when you cannot directly locate the star precisely in the plate solved image.
Next string of targets were no other than star clusters.
M11 the wild duck cluster was interesting to me because it was a quite densely populated open cluster. A quick glimpse often gives me an impression of the image of a globular.
M5 globular cluster. Similar in brightness to M13.
M13 itself. You can detect a little galaxy image to the right of the view. But the overall short total exposure under the heavey light pollution would not give an accurate account of how magnificent this cluster is.
M92. Also in Her. I was attracted to this object simply because it is one of the oldest globular clusters. Wikipedia says its age is 11 ± 1.5 billion years.
Wow!
The ring nebula. Hmm, the consumer mirrorless camera of M50 could not capture the rich red color spectrum. And I also did not bother to capture a set of R-G-B images using my mono cam.
Now this is one of the farthest objects an average newbie amateur can capture. At red shift Z=3.63, the photons of QSO B1422-2309 captured here are aged 11.937G years - probably even before the so-ooooooooold M92 GC began to shine.
Around mid-night, the clouds finally sneaked in and I could but wish for another clear sky soon.