NGC 6726/27 - Reflection Nebulae
NGC 6729 - Bright Nebula
IC 4812 - Reflection Nebula
BSO 14 - Double Star
DN Bernes 157 - Dark Nebula
... and there are other objects here, too, including HH 100 and a couple of dim galaxies... :>)
This week's OOTW is not actually a single object, but rather a collection of objects located in (2) adjacent constellations. The 'anchor' object is a nice globular cluster, NGC 6723, located at the southern edge of Sagittarius, and everything else is about 30 arc-minutes to the southeast in Corona Australis. It is a little early in the year for this area, but in the wee hours of the morning it is available… but culmination is in August, so it not so long to wait.
NGC is a fabulous globular cluster and would be more popular to observers in the northern hemisphere were it to be higher in our sky. It is has an impressive uniform halo and bright core, but from my regular observing site in southern California it never gets any higher in the sky than about 25 degrees, so conditions need to be very good to get a good look. Imagine what M 13 looks like when it is at a similar altitude and you will get a pretty good idea of what NGC 6723 looks like from my place.
NGC 6723 provides a great jumping-off point for locating the other goodies in the area, and you can see many of them, along with the globular, if you have an eyepiece that provides more that a ½ degree field. My best view of this area was achieved using my trusty 13mm Ethos, and the object that initially attracted my attention was the double star BSO 14, appearing as a closely matched blazing pair of 6.5 magnitude headlights, with an easy separation of about 12”, surrounded by the reflection nebula IC 4812, and after that you can wander around to identify the other wonders in the area. One exceptional night allowed me to see the huge cashew-shaped dark nebula, Bernes 157, best seen with whatever combination of telescope and eyepiece that will give you a large field of view. I have identified all of the NGC and IC objects in the area despite the fact that it is low in the sky for me.
The internet is full of wonderful pictures and articles written about this little chunk of sky, and I have listed some of them here. The first in the list is specially informative. I urge you to visit these links and marvel at the photos of this area, but there is nothing like perusing it for yourselves, if it gets high enough in your sky on a night of good seeing and transparency.
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