[AZ-Observing] Casual viewing with the Lowell Clark

     I went up to the edge of Mars Hill this evening to have a look at the
local fireworks display, and found that most of the folks by the Clark 
telescope were our summer students along with some visiting parents.  It's been
very pleasant to have these smart and energetic folks around this year,
including wearing the crap out of me playing volleyball (as expected---they're
25 years younger than me after all).  After the finale of the terrestrial
display we went inside the dome to check out fireworks of the celestial sort.
     The current Clark "friend" (telescope-operator) John DeDecker was on hand,
and was eager to stay a bit late to show us a variety of objects that there's
usually no time to get to when there's a large crowd of tourists (as earlier
in the evening).
     We started with objet-de-soir Messier 5.  The last several times I've
seen this in the Clark (usually working at about 280x), I've noticed a little
asterism of four equally-bright stars close to the center.  Three form a
line and the fourth makes a triangle with them.
     John is a big planetary nebula fan, and he has most of the early-summer
objects down cold with the Clark.  He first wheeled the beast to NGC 6210,
where the nebula is bright and the central star relatively difficult; then to
IC 4593, just the opposite with it's mag. 11 central star and weaker envelope.
John then showed us the Dumbbell, which seemed to fill the eyepiece.  Then on
to Albireo, with some astrophysical asides for the students.  Next I suggested
BD+30 3639, which I'd never seen through a long-focus telescope.  Despite
having never looked at it before, John identified it immediately in the 6-inch
finder (90x) as looking "funny" compared to the field stars, and was pleased
to notice the reddish tinge in the main instrument.  Here the central star is
close to V=10.0, and the nebula comparatively weak, but clear with the large
aperture.
     The finale for the session was M17, which at the high magnification of
the telescope showed swathes and blotches of nebulosity all over the field.
     Is this where I'm supposed to write:  "a good time was had by all"?

\Brian
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