Alachua Astronomy Club: FirstLight Tenth Year -- Larkin 1995 September

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	FirstLight's First Ten Years	Member Astronomical League	Member International Dark-Sky Association
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FirstLight is the official, monthly publication of the Alachua Astronomy Club (AAC),
Gainesville, Florida USA. Copyright © 1987-99. All rights reserved.

Introduction & Dedication

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1995

Tenth Anniversary Edition: From September 1995 FirstLight

The Observer's Report

by Joe Larkin
Deep South Objects in Corona Australis
One of the nice things about astronomy in Florida is the good view of the far southern skies. The Summer skies are beautiful with great views of Scorpius and Sagittarius. Less known but still high enough to see fairly well is Corona Australis (CrA).

In early August I was observing from Watermelon Pond looking at objects in the southwest of Scorpius when I stumbled over a large and bright globular. Looking at my charts I discovered this was NGC 6541. It was very bright and large. At 175x (power) some resolution was visible in my 10-inch, f/4.8 dob. It is listed as magnitude 6.6 and 13' (arc minutes) in size. Seeing this very nice object made me curious about other objects in CrA so I looked in Burnham's Celestial Handbook. Burnham's lists only five objects including a strange complex of nebulosity. I was surprised at how bright and easy it appeared in my scope at 50x. The nebulosity has two main parts. A fairly bright haze around two bright stars is cataloged as NGC 6726 and NGC 6727. The third part is a small but very high surface brightness nebulosity about 5' to the south called NGC 6729. I, at first, overlooked this until I used higher power. This part was still easily visible at 175x. The small detached part appeared comet shaped and looked at if it was traveling toward the main mass of nebulosity. The view with a UHC filter was no better. This indicates these objects are reflection type nebulae. If this unusual group of nebula were higher up, I'm sure it would be fairly well known.

Another nice object in CrA is IC 1297. This is a small but bright planetary nebula. Burnham states it is only 2" (arc seconds) in size. However, I could easily make out the disk with about 175x so it is likely closer to 8". It is cataloged at magnitude 11.5.

If you want to see objects that few people will ever see yet are still bright and interesting check, out these objects in CrA.
Epoch 2000 Positions

Object       RA        DEC
            h  m       d   ,
NGC 6541   18 08.0   -43 42
NGC 6726   19 01.6   -36 54
NGC 6727   19 01.8   -36 54
NGC 6729   19 01.8   -36 58
IC  1297   19 17.4   -39 36
Bruno Pancorbo and Joe Larkin will be collaborating on a regular observer's column for FirstLight. They will likely concentrate on Deep Sky observing as that is their main interest. However, they would be glad to hear and report on any interesting observations anyone makes. They observe regularly and invite anyone who is interested to come along. Please feel free to call Bruno at 904-373-0279 or Joe at 904-378-7705 for more information. Joe can also be reached by E-mail at jlarkin@eel.ufl.edu

Notes:

arc minute 1/60 of a degree.
arc second 1/3600 of a degree (1/60 of an arc minute).
Dob A Dobsonian telescope, an instrument with an altazimuth mount (up-down, left-right) with Teflon bearings.
magnitude brightness—smaller numbers signify brighter objects. (Naked eye limit is about mag. +6.)

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