NGC 6520 -- Open Cluster in Sagittarius
Tiny Diamonds Dancing Around a Huge Ruby
The Open Cluster NGC 6520 was my biggest surprise and best deep sky object of the night. I
know I have observed this cluster in the past since it is a Herschel 400 object, but I somehow
missed it true charm. My guess is that I always used low power to view this tiny cluster of stars
(it is only 5 arcminutes in size). Tonight however, I bumped up the power to get the detail for
the drawing and the cluster came to life --- a reddish ruby with tiny white diamonds scattered
all around it. The fainter star-diamonds were flickering in-and-out of my vision which gave me
the impression that they were dancing around the ruby (star HD 316951). The drawing is a
composite of the star field seen at a magnification of 59x, while the cluster detail was teased
out at 162x.
know I have observed this cluster in the past since it is a Herschel 400 object, but I somehow
missed it true charm. My guess is that I always used low power to view this tiny cluster of stars
(it is only 5 arcminutes in size). Tonight however, I bumped up the power to get the detail for
the drawing and the cluster came to life --- a reddish ruby with tiny white diamonds scattered
all around it. The fainter star-diamonds were flickering in-and-out of my vision which gave me
the impression that they were dancing around the ruby (star HD 316951). The drawing is a
composite of the star field seen at a magnification of 59x, while the cluster detail was teased
out at 162x.