Lo Barnechea, Chile

Bortle 7 skies

Seeing 2/5 Transparency 3/5

Object Name: NGC 6723

Object Type: Globular Cluster

RA (Topocentric): 19h 00m 56.3s

Dec (Topocentric): -36° 36' 10"

Magnitude: 6,80

Transit Time: 21:32

Constellation: SGR

Date: 22-08-20

Constellation: Sagittarius

Constellation (Abbrev.): Sgr

Corona australis deserves its name not just for its characteristic crown shaped constellation pattern but for the great jewels it contains. The Caldwell catalog includes NGC6729 as object C68, the comet shaped star surrounded with nebulosity in the lower left quadrant. Was Sir Patrick Moore (the author of the Caldwell objects) thinking just the way Messier would have done if he had the chance to see this region? Messier was a comet chaser but located too far north to see this region of the sky. Yet, NGC6729 is just one of the great objects you can get in the same field of view. The nebulosity surrounding the double stars in NGC6726-7 could be an individual target by itself, but maybe the main attraction in the patch would be the globular cluster NGC6723. I named this image for this target because it is the single most prominent object in the area and will not go unnoticed in binoculars or small telescopes. Chadwick and Cooper (Imaging the southern Sky) called this region the anteater. Is it named after the dark nebulae shape in the lower left corner?

I was reluctant to share this image because it is not exactly what I expected. I tried imaging this frame about a month ago but skies were awfully foggy and ended up with disposable images. I gave it a chance last night even if I had to perform a meridian flip an hour or so after the imaging run had begun. This object is now moving to the west at night. and you may end up past the meridian early at night. I had about 1.2 arc-sec RMS which appeared miraculous for my lousy mount and skies were clear in the evening. Nevertheless, after midnight I had this feeling that the images in OIII were rather odd. To my surprise, they were way out of focus but…damn I had refocused just an hour before. I went outside and realized clouds were coming in and that was the reason for these bold stars. I had to keep my CLS and half of my H-alpha images and dispose the rest just as I did a month before. This is it for now. Of course I will try to add another one or two imaging runs as soon as it clears up again but I wanted to share this beautiful patch of sky regardless of the relatively poor result. Isn’t it still beautiful? It reminds me that every imaging night is a new adventure and things can go way off what you planned ahead. Astroimaging is for those of us with tons of tolerance to frustration.