NGC 6207 in Hercules

Andromeda is easy enough. I logged M81/M82 using the NASA OWN remote telescope (9 July 2021). The Austin club's dark sky site is south of the city, so at star parties the Messier objects in Ursa Major are problematic with a smaller refractor. From my backyard, I have never had any success with the Virgo Cluster or the Leo Triplet. So, I made a list of 10 Spiral Galaxies to pursue and last night I found NGC 6207 in Hercules. (These comments appeared first in the Cloudy Nights forum for Deep Sky and the Observation Log Continued). 

Last night and this morning, I found NGC 6207 in Hercules. 

Nominally in a “suburb” the sky here is too white. Last night, I used a binocular (10x42) to search for the Milky Way, but no joy. I have a hospital one mile to my north with a gas station between us. I think that NGC 6207 was successful because it is near the zenith.

I was viewing with the Astro-Tech 115 mm triplet. With focal length F=805mm its theoretic limits are Magnitude 12.8, Resolution 1.01 arc-sec; Magnification 230X. I was unable to see Messier 101 magnitude 7.9 low in the north but found NGC 6207 magnitude 11.6 near the zenith, and the magnifications were 57X and 115X. Sky conditions are more important than aperture and magnification. Anyway, I was happy to have seen something new and very far away (30 million LY). 

Hubble Space Telescope images of NGC 6207 from 
Wikimedia Commons. 
My view was more like a globular cluster: 
a small white circular array of very close dots.
The spiral was not evident at all.

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

 

Observing with NASA: An Open Platform for Citizen Science 

(Not) Observing with NASA and Harvard 

Messier 13: the Hercules Cluster 

An Online Class in Astrophysics