After a rainy 3 day vacation stay (Thursday - Sunday) in Boston we arrived home to clear sky Sunday night, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to image no matter how tired I felt. This is my 1st image of the night and my 1st time imaging Messier 56. I think it turned out ok, probably would have turned out better if I had a larger aperture say an 11 inch SCT, but I am into refractors and most likely will stay with refractors.
Messier 56 (M56) is a globular star cluster located in the small northern constellation
Lyra. M56 has an apparent magnitude of 8.3 and lies at a distance of 32,900 light years from Earth. The cluster has the designation NGC 6779 in the New General Catalogue.
Messier 56 is relatively easy to find because it lies roughly halfway along the line from
Albireo, Beta Cygni, to Sulafat, Gamma Lyrae.
Albireo, a famous double star, marks the beak of the celestial
Swan and the base of the
Northern Cross, while Sulaphat can be located in
Lyra, on the opposite side to the bright
Vega.The cluster can be a challenge in binoculars because it is quite dim and does not have a bright core. In large binoculars, it appears as a fuzzy patch or an out-of-focus star. To resolve it into individual stars, one needs an 8-inch or larger telescope.4-inch telescopes show a round ball of light, but do not reveal much detail. Visually, observers can only see the cluster’s central region, about 3 arc minutes in diameter. The best time of year to observe M56 is during the summer months.Messier 56 occupies an area of 8.8 arc minutes, which corresponds to a linear diameter of about 84 light years. It has a mass about 230,000 times that of the Sun. The estimated age of M56 is 13.7 billion years.
Comments