It was clear but seeing was only average at the start of the night, improving as it wore on. I opened the 20-inch and continued observing deep sky objects with my PVS-14. Really satisfying session. Started around 9:30pm and closed at midnight. 38x and 1-degree TFOV.
NGC 6735: Ring of 7 brighter stars with a bright one as "diamond," some fainter concentrated in the area.
NGC 6760: Globular, appears as a fairly large and bright dusty faint ball, irregularly round with loops and wings coming off the core as if blown by winds.
NGC 6749 Faint irregularly round cloud, with bright star in middle but faint dusty looking otherwise. It is supposedly the most difficult NGC globular to observe visually but is a piece of cake with NV. From a CN article: "NGC 6749 is an aging halo cluster on an as-yet undetermined orbit which presently is plunging the cluster through the Milky Way. According to the Harris catalog, N6749 is presently 5 kiloparsecs (16,300) light years from the Galactic core and 7.9 kpc (25,750) ly from us. At only 2.1 degrees below the Galactic plane at +32.6° Galactic longitude, it lies in the interarm region between the Scutum/Centaurus Arm and the Sagittarius Arm (of which our Orion Spur is a part). Between Earth and N6749 is a thick 2,000 light-year star forming region where our Galaxy’s bar structure turns sharply left to begin the Sagittarius Arm. After that, light from N6749 passes through an additional 10,000 ly of spiral arm star formation, dust, infalling cloud gas, shock fronts emitting in the IR, plus supernova and magnetic turbulence on its way to our eyepieces. Much of N6749’s original light has been absorbed by dust on the way. N6749 is being tidally disrupted by the passage, but we don’t know how gravitationally weakened the cluster has become because astronomers haven’t yet determined its path and original composition. The fate of N6749 is not unique—NGC 2298 Puppis has lost 85% of its stars to tidal stripping and likewise may not survive much longer."
Sh 2-71 = PN G035.9-01.1 Appears immediately when flipping to 7nm Ha, irregular oval N-S, with a dark elongated center and brighter knots along the western and easters sides which look like flower petals. The northern end appears to be blown out with hazy nebulosity, and the southern end sprouts a hooked foot-like appendage, likely split by dark nebula.
NGC 6755 Large, loose concentration of stars barely separated from the dense background.
NGC 6781 Appears right away flipping to 7nm Ha, round with definite but soft edge, fat tire shape with a darker interior, and a weaker, broken blowout on the west side of the ring with nebulosity spilling out from it. Very nice!
Abell 53: Small, slightly out of round thick ring nebula with a dark center. The ring has a defined edge and is slightly thicker/brighter on the south side.
NGC 6804 Small, irregularly round. The central star is not sharp, rather it is a brightening in the fog. Surface brightness is fainter from the central star's glow to the bright ring, with the northern part of the ring appearing to slightly fracture from the rest of the structure.
Sh 2-80: = WR 124 = Merrill's star. Bright star with round, heavily mottled nebula around it, bifurcated into two butterfly wings. A nearby fainter star has a small sheet of nebulosity hanging from it.
NGC 6802 Elongated oval of faint stars within a trapezium asterism of brighter stars. Four loops of stars coming out from the main grouping at each quadrant make it look like a cloverleaf asterism. There's a brighter central star in the middle of the group.
NGC 6793: A density of a few stars in a dense field.
NGC 6820 & 6823: The open cluster is not much to speak of, a oval concentration of stars with a couple bright in the middle. But the surrounding nebulosity is spectacular! Rosette-like, shot through with dark lanes and vast sweeps, and a very prominent long dark elephant trunk pointing into it! At the base of the trunk are two more smaller ones emerging from the dark dust. Amazing.
M27 = Dumbbell. Lifetime view. Apple core is obvious but the knots and bright streaks, twists, and flows within it make it three-dimensional, like the broken shell of an egg. Two blowout zones with nebula escaping, one side has more nebula escaped than the other, it extends further from the core. Either side of apple core is sharply defined and appear to be bow shocks.
NGC 6885: Large congregation of faint stars around a single bright star. It's a very dense field, certainly because of NV, and not well separated from the field as a result. I speculate that without NV the OCs are more separated and thus "discovered" as open clusters, whereas with NV much of them are not as separated and might not have been noticed as open clusters.
NGC 6905: Appears flipping to 7nm Ha. Small, round and mottled but getting pulled and stretched in opposite directions NNW-SSE. Central star appears offset to the east, and the halo is slightly brighter on that side.
NGC 6950: Very week loose concentration of a few stars. How is this an open cluster?
NGC 7006: Small, bright, concentrated core with wisps of faint stars radiating out.
NGC 7025 is a small elliptical galaxy with a bright round core and faint 3:1 arms orientated NE-SW. It is set at foot of the toadstool asterism (French 1), which is pointed SW in the below image.
NGC 6934: Some brighter stars in the intense core make a semi circle. Spikes of stars radiate out from the core.
NGC 6852: Small, thick ring with a dark middle, best seen with Ha+OIII dual band filter.
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