During an abbreviated session Friday night I managed to spend some quality time with Hercules. M92 was my first target. The junior globular in this heroic constellation is one of my favorite globular clusters to view. Friday night I used magnifications of 80X, 208X, 260X, and 320X. All of those magnifications gave very nice views. As stars resolve at higher magnifications in many globular clusters you begin to see arcing strands of stars sweeping across the face of the cluster, or trailing out and away from it. M92 has those also, but in it I tend to see a greater percentage of more angular lines of stars which gives the core of M92 a more geometric look. For the first time Friday I saw two parallel lines of suns forming a small ‘=’ in the core. I thought that was very cool.
Also in Hercules is a much shyer globular cluster, NGC 6229. This one is almost 100,000 light years away, and is tough to resolve. The core of 6229 is not as condensed as are the cores of M13 and M92. Its light seems spread more evenly, but there is a looser halo in which I could see some graininess at 208X and 260X.
The planetary nebula NGC 6210 was my final target of the evening. Also known as the Turtle Nebula, this planetary appeared as a tiny, bright, robin’s egg blue oval at 80X. At 208X there was just a hint of a faint outer halo. Additional magnification, up to 320X, and the use of UHC and OIII filters didn’t reveal any further detail.