Last night I managed to get three hours of dark-sky observing under good summer conditions in Cherry Springs. Rare excellent seeing was wasted on a slight problem I was having with the primary cell of my 16”, but I still enjoyed a very decent transparency (for summer, that is – dewpoint was 18 C) and a horizon remarkably free of haze.
A highlight was Pluto just past conjunction with Palomar 8. The globular showed diffuse edges and very little concentration. Unsurprisingly, it was unresolved but had a few stars superimposed on it in the rich Sagittarius field. In the sketch, Pluto is indicated with two dashes SW of the globular. It was slightly brighter than the four immediately neighboring stars, and lay on a side of a tetragon which they formed inside a “hook” of the Z-shaped bright asterism SW of Pal 8. Even a couple days past true conjunction the planet and the globular shared the central area of the field of the Ethos at 225x. UT 2013-07-17 06:00.
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