Sky and Telescope - August 2015 - 54

OBSERVING

Deep-Sky Wonders

Good Things, Small Package
The shield of Scutum shelters a diverse collection of treasure.
For a constellation you could hide with your hand held
at arm's length, Scutum the Shield parents an amazing
wealth of deep-sky wonders. Its favored child is glorious
Messier 11, whose magnificent rafts of pinpoint stars
always deserve admiration. But Scutum's other celestial
children are also noteworthy, so this month let's focus
on some of them.
Only two objects from Charles Messier's famous
18th-century catalog dwell within Scutum, but that's the
same number you'll find within Taurus the Bull. This
seems impressive, considering Taurus is the 17th largest
of the 88 constellations, while Scutum ranks 84th. Let's
launch our tour with Scutum's often-neglected Messier
object, Messier 26.
It's challenging to find star clusters amid the rich
Milky Way star cloud that dominates Scutum, but
Messier 26 is handily located 48′ east-southeast of Delta
(δ) Scuti. The cluster is easily visible through 15×45
image-stabilized binoculars in my moderately light-

polluted sky. Its modestly large, hazy glow sports a lone
star. Through my 130-mm refractor at 48×, M26 is an
attractive gathering of 25 stars that spans about 10′ and
stands out well from its background. A magnification
of 102× unveils about 40 stars. The western side of the
group is sparsely populated, but a nice duo trims the
west-southwestern edge.
Maryland amateur Mike Rowles and his family enjoy
looking at M26 through Mike's 10-inch reflector. He says
it looks like a little jumping spider staring straight at
them with its big, shiny eyes. I think that's a great description. Can you envision this cute celestial arachnid?
M26 is only 5,200 light-years away from us, but it
suffers considerable dimming from intervening dust in
the plane of our galaxy. If we could sweep the dust away,
M26 would shine at magnitude 6.2 rather than the 8.0
we see in our sky. It's also young as open clusters go,
having celebrated its 85 millionth birthday.
Moving 2.0°° east-northeast from M26 takes us to

-7°

-8°

6664

α

-8°

¡

"A r r o w "
Kohoutek
4-8

δ

6712

-9°

SCUTUM

-9°

Minkowski 1-59

IC 1295

"B o w "

b
SCUTUM
-10°

M26

-11° 18h 55m

54

Star magnitudes

Star magnitudes

6649
5
6
7
8
9
10

-10°

18h 50m

August 2015 sky & telescope

18h 45m

18h 40m

5
6
7
8
9
10

HD
171391

18h 40m

18h 35m

-11°

18h 30m



Sky and Telescope - August 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky and Telescope - August 2015

Contents
Sky and Telescope - August 2015 - Cover1
Sky and Telescope - August 2015 - Cover2
Sky and Telescope - August 2015 - 1
Sky and Telescope - August 2015 - Contents
Sky and Telescope - August 2015 - 3
Sky and Telescope - August 2015 - A
Sky and Telescope - August 2015 - B
Sky and Telescope - August 2015 - 4
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