Date: 9./10.10.2015
Time: 20:00-23:00 (local time)
Observing site: Mirador de Chio (2100m), Teide N.P., Tenerife, Spain
Instrument: L80/400mm (3” refractor)
NELM: 6.6
SQM: 20.98-21.30
Darkness of the background sky: 1
Seeing: 2
Transparency: 1
Weather: Clear sky, light wind, +16 – +15 C
Objects observed: NGC 6231, 6400, 6441, 6541, 6723
On the fourth night of my observing trip to Tenerife, I went observing on a different spot. This time I drove further the road to Teide caldera. From the caldera I found a place called Mirador de Chio, which was a scenary/viewpoint for tourists. There was also a good paved place for parking a car and for observing. The only downside of this spot was that it was along a straight road, and whenever a car approached, the headlights of the car were disturbing observing quite much.
And another thing was that I wasn’t the onlyone interested in stargazing – at some point during the night a tourist bus full of apparenty italian tourists stopped by and their guide started giving them a star show in italian! That was interesting in itself, but it was disturbing my observing. During this night I made 5 observations that I publish. Besides this there was also sixth observation, but I’m very uncertain of it, I doubt that I hadn’t even seen the actual object that I was trying to observe. This target was a small reflection nebula 6729 on Sagittarius – Corona australis border.
Anyway, I’ll present my succesfull observations from the fourth night here:
NGC 6231
NGC 6231 (Caldwell 76) is a small and compact open cluster in southern Scorpius, just 30′ north from zeta Scorpii. Of this object, I wrote as follows:
Small, compact and bright-starred open cluster. Pretty nice!
NGC 6441
My next target was NGC 6441 (Hidden treasure 86), which is a small globular cluster in the tip of the tail of Scorpius. Of this object I wrote following notes:
Small and faint globular cluster, not resolved, even brightness distribution.
NGC 6400
NGC 6400 (Hidden treasure 82) is an open cluster located in the tail of Scorpius, just 1 degree east from lambda Scorpii. I wrote following notes of this object:
A small, faint-starred open cluster, mostly visible as a star glow.
NGC 6541
NGC 6541 (Caldwell 78) is a lonely globular cluster in the constellation of Corona australis. Of this object, I wrote following notes:
Rather small, pretty bright globular cluster, gets brighter towards the core, not resolved.
NGC 6723
NGC 6723 (Hidden treasure 96) is a globular cluster in southern Saggitarius, just on the Sagittarius-Corona australis border. I wrote following notes of this object:
Rather small and bright open cluster. The cluster has pretty even brightness distribution, not resolved.
Celest1al Sphere 