Messier 21

Returning home from an all day 50th birthday party at 10.30pm under a clear sky gave me an opportunity to get a little observation in that resulted in a little sketching, it had been a scorcher of a day hitting around 30 deg Feraheiht . I ended up viewing and sketching a couple of low targets down in Sagittarius which was well placed, if not well presented being very hazy and rather bright sky wise at SQM 19.5. My first sketch is of Messier 21 an open cluster that was missing from my Messier folder. I was running both the un cooled 120N+ Watec camera, and the new cooled one, the former on the 6” refractor and the later on the 20”. The 6” gave a larger fov so I sketched that view of this open cluster which lies very close to the Triffid nebula M20 as this image from friend David Davis shows

What I liked most about M21 is the lovely circular asterism of stars above the knot of brighter central gems, very pleasing.

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