Globular clusters (GC) are some of my favorite targets for this time of the year with short spring and summer nights and the annoyance of daylight saving time. With sunsets around 2030 and astronomical twilight's around 2240 globulars can usually be acquired in less than 15 minutes making for productive nights of imaging.
Why do I keep coming back to these low hanging fruits? I like to think I can improve on my past performance and take advantage very rare good seeing Northeast nights. Most of these targets are low in the southern sky making it challenging to image them with the denser more turbulent air and refraction.
A few recent examples appear below. All of these globulars were acquired from a favorite Harvard, MA darkish site with 15 x 30s subframes with a ASI294MC-Pro, Starizona Night Owl 0.4x focal reducer and Celestron 8 on an Advanced VX mount.
While I call this Globular Cluster Season there are many more open clusters favorably placed this time of the year. Look for images of those in up coming posts.
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Messier 3
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Messier 5
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Messier 53
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Messier 13
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Messier 92
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NGC5897
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Messier 4
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Messier 10
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Messier 12
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| Messier 14 |
