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A^ (NOAO/^ AURA^ /NSF)skyandtelescope.com • AUGUST 2019 55
The Eagle dwells in a realm of the sky
rife with nebulae and star clusters. Its
unsung neighbor Trumpler 32 resides
just 38′ northwest and shares the fi eld
with M16 through my 6-inch refl ector
at 38×. This nice little cluster is a hazy
cobweb with a corona of faint, dewdrop
stars glimmering on the sable walls of
night. At 154× about 20 stars overspread
11 ′ of sky. A prominent knot of several
stars dominates the southern part of
the cluster. At high magnifi cation, my
10-inch refl ector reveals a wealth of
suns, many so faint that they blink in
and out of view.
On the opposite side of the Eagle,
we fi nd the emission nebula Sharpless
2-48. Look 1° southeast of M16 for a
7th-magnitude star, the brightest in the
area. Centered 12′ south-southeast of
that star is a 6′ trapezoid of stars 9th
magnitude and fainter. Through my
6-inch refl ector at 95×, the brightest
region of this patchy nebula surrounds
the western side of the trapezoid and
spreads 4′ westward. Dimmer nebulos-
ity extends to the trapezoid’s eastern
side and becomes more attenuated as it
reaches southeast.
The large, faint nebula Sharpless
2-54 lies 1¾° north of the Eagle. Under
a dark sky, binoculars will give you a
nice view if you place the Eagle in the
southern part of the fi eld. I perused
this emission nebula through my 15× 45
image-stabilized binoculars while in the
northern Adirondack Mountains, one
of the darkest areas in my home state of
New York. They revealed a 1° × 2° star-
rich haze that’s wide in the west and
tapers toward the east-northeast. Much
of the haze I see may well be the light
of unresolved stars. This section of the
Milky Way stands out as a somewhat
isolated star cloud bounded on the west
by the dusky clouds of the Great Rift
and lined with smaller dark nebulae on
the east. Nonetheless, it’s a pretty sight.
Barnard 95 is the most obvious
dark nebula on the eastern end of Sh
2-54. Through my 6-inch scope at 38×,
it seems to grow blacker toward the
center. Barnard 95’s inkiest area spans
about 10′, while the entire nebula is per-
haps twice that size and quite irregular.Sh2-46Eagle Nebula
M166517IC 1276 65396631 6604Tr 32aiSCUTUMoSERPENS CAUDAOPHSh 2-48Sh 2-54B95B9718 h 20 m–8°18 h 30 m 18 h 10 m 18 h 00 m–10°–12°–14°c
Starmagni
tudes^3
4 5 6 7 8 9NGC 6631 is a little misty patch off its
southeastern side. The open cluster is
elongated southeast-northwest with an
11th-magnitude star at the northwest-
ern end. At 95× NGC 6631 shows 20
faint to very faint stars in a 5′ glow; at
154 × it’s crowded with minute stars.
Next we’ll trek northwest to a trio of
globular clusters. The fi rst of the grouppLeft: The author’s sketch of the Eagle Nebula demonstrates that many of the features in the
image at right are visible through a 5-inch telescope. Right: Like most Hubble Space Telescope
images, this photograph of the Eagle Nebula (taken through a small professional ground-based
telescope) uses a false-color palette. Emissions from hydrogen are shown as green, oxygen as
red, and sulfur as blue. The Pillars of Creation are in the center.