Observations of M68
These are the observations available for M68. If you have any of your own that you'd like to submit we'd love to put them on the website.
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Messier 68 in Hydra
I keep a list of the Messier objects that I image and M68 is listed as being too low to observe. It reaches around 10.4 degrees of altitude at my location at which point it is skimming just above the branches of the trees at the end of the field behind my observatory. It is visible above the trees for barely an hour. Last night presented an opportunity to try to observe it, but the sky had become very dark with haze and only a few of the brighter stars were visible by eye. Nevertheless, I had a go.
I've recently rediscovered the power of binned exposures with my QSI camera, giving an effective pixel size of 10.8um and an ideal image scale of 1.3"/pixel on my 8" RC telescope. My previous experiments with binned exposures were mixed and I stopped using the technique.
Messier 68 is a globular cluster discovered by Charles Messier in 1780. Messier found it to be unresolvable, but William Herschel first resolved it into stars in 1786. M68 is a rich cluster of around 100,000 stars; it lies at a distance of 33,000 light-years and is around 106 light-years across.
This image of the globular cluster Messier 68 in Hydra is by David Davies and taken from Cambridge in the UK. To see more of David's work please visit his Flickr Photostream. This image is the result of just 10 minutes of exposures each of RGB, 5 x two minutes each, binned 2 x2, as M68 cleared the tops of the trees briefly. Despite atmospheric dispersion, poor sky transparency, horrible seeing and a severely attenuated blue component, I am happy to share the image. I suspect that it is rarely observed in the UK.
Image Details
- Telescope: 8" Ritchey-Chretien
- Camera: QSI 683 with Astrodon RGB filters
- Mount: Skywatcher EQ8.
David Davies - (24 March 2022).
