September Skies offer some good opportunities for deep sky observing, especially here in the dry season skies of the NT in northern Australia. Wait till the skies are clear and moonless and you can seek out the same delights of the night sky.

Globular Clusters -

Prominent in the early evening in the southern sky (if you are in the Northern Hemisphere), and at or close to the zenith if you are in the far southern hemisphere, is the Constellation Sagittarius (The Archer), better know as "The Teapot". Once you have picked it out in the night sky you will see the familiar teapot shape easily and certainly much easier than you will see an Archer ! This constellation and the adjacent constellations of of Ophiuchus (the serpent bearer) and Scorpius (the Scorpion) are rich in deep sky delights, especially globular clusters. The most prominent of these being the Messier Cataloged M4, M28, M22 and M55 just to name a few of the brighter ones.

What's A Messier Catalog? -

Well it goes like this: Well known Comet hunter Charles Messier of 18th Century France, needed to catalog objects that could be confused with comets in the small telescopes of the day. So he identified the brightest 100 or so objects in the night sky (from Paris) these became M1 to M110, with the last few being added by his colleagues after is passing. So the upshot for us in the 21st century is that we now have a simple list of Galaxies, Nebulas, Star Clusters and more, that are quite delightful when viewed thought Amateur Telescopes using optics that good old Charles could only dream of in the 1700's. For those of us in the southern Hemisphere the catalog has some very obvious gaps, with many delights of deep space seen from here being bigger and brighter than 3/4 of the objects in the Messier list ! (They will be the subject of a future article)

Beyond Globular Clusters -

Of course the delights of deep space to be seen here are not limited to Globular Clusters though, with the Lagoon Nebula (M8), the Trifid Nebula (M20), the Eagle Nebula (M16) and the Sagittarius star cloud (M24) are surely in the top 20 of all deep sky objects.

So how do you find & see these these amazing deep space delights?



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