After getting conflicting weather forecasts for the night I didn't anticipate the night sky to offer much. Between rounds of the fight I was watching on TV, I decided to step out and take a peek. Naturally it was dark, transparent, with only a few clouds to the North- east. I went back in and watched the last round of the fight and then grabbed my binoculars, red flash light, a magnifying glass, and Pocket Sky Atlas. (I've found a magnifying glass easier to use to read star charts than constantly putting on and removing my bifocal glasses.)
Scorpius was beautiful in the southern sky. After my eyes dark adapted ( takes ~ 15 minutes, but my vision is pretty good after 5 minutes) all but the tail star Eta was visible naked eye M7 ( mag 3.3, 80') was a faint fuzzy patch naked eye and a nice glittering cluster in my binoculars with direct vision.
M6, the butterfly cluster(mag. 4.2, ) was not visible naked eye, and hard to see in my binos direct. In my peripheral vision I could detect M6 as a faint fuzzy patch.
Moving over to Sagittarius, M22 ( mag. 5.1, 38') stood out in my binos with averted vision, but was hard to see directly. I moved up to M25 (mag. 4.6, 32') and found a relatively bright fuzzy area to the South-east of a small triangle of stars. The brightest 2 stars in the triangle were away from the cluster.
Moving over toward M24 ( mag 4.6, 90'), the star cloud, there was a rich field full of countless faint stars . This is one of the nicer astronomical objects I've seen in binoculars.
The clouds rolled in and obscured pretty much everything and by 1220 the cloud cover was 90+% and showed no signs of blowing over any time soon. Rather than needlessly risk Wesst Nile virus, I called it a night. Perhaps I'll catch a clear night soon and shake the cobwebs off the scope.
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