Hercules, Lyra and Aquila (A)

My list of choice Messier objects coupled with the free monthly star charts from skymaps.com (righteous) are making it easier to determine the best catch of the night for my location / time of year / time of night.



Right now Hercules is high in the sky when I finally get outside (10pm or later), but I don't mind waiting since it's pretty hot until then when some cool breezes start lending me their help. Near the keystone of Hercules we looked at M13 - the Hercules Globular Cluster commonly called "Best Globular in the Northern Skies"... it doesn't suck too much at all. This is where the 250mm beats down on the 70mm since I couldn't really get much closer than the 20mm in the refractor, but w/ the big dob I went all the way to 15mm w/ 3x Barlow (240x magnification) which showed me individual stars :)



Lyra - saw the double double (one is stacked up and one is side to side).




Ring Nebula - while looking at Lyra I noticed this DSO and it's the one you see in the picture books... Here are two pictures of it (one that's almost like it looked for me and one that's a hubble level badass).



Here's the badass...




It's so amazing to actually see a smoke ring floating through space with my own eyes and absolutely no artificial shenanigans at all (electronics, etc.).



Now on to Aquila (the eagle) - At it's tail is M11, the Wild Duck Cluster... named for it's V shape through binoculars. Lots of stars that are easy to differentiate, but the shape is definitely asymmetrical.



Scorpius - Saw the three stars that make up his claws and identified it - that's pretty much it.