Last night was (relatively) quiet here at the Witt observatory (aka our driveway). A few coyotes up the road singing Meat Me In Saint Louis, a cameo appearance by Fred who seemed to be on task to get to the back deck, and a surprising number of meteorites still around from last week’s big shower. I opted to look into the Sagittarius region of the galaxy even though it’s low in the sky, it’s loaded with great targets that I can barely see above the trees.
First of two I’ve never looked at was the Small Sagittarius Cloud, M24. Small is a relative term in astronomy. This baby is 600 lightyears wide and proved to be beyond the width range of my scope. It consists of millions of stars ranging from 10,000 to 16,000 lightyears away. I got about half of it and will try for the full image when conditions are better. Easy to understand why it’s called a star cloud.
The other gem in the Sagittarius region is the Sagittarius Cluster, M22. Small by comparison with only 500,000 stars, however, they’re clustered into a nice tight package. This elliptical cluster, one of about 150 in the Milky Way, is considered to be one of the brighter of the bunch. This is a stack of 159 images. Can’t wait to get more than 27 minutes on this target. Dew was an issue last night. You’d think I’d remember to turn on the dew heater …
Witt’s End 