Towards the end of our two weeks in Namibia I was surprised to note that I had few targets left for my small telescope when Carina and Centaurus were already about to set. The Anteater Nebula was on my list but it was not a very desirable object. Ivan urged me to draw it and as I saw it in my telescope I started to feel like doing it.

The field of view consists of two radically different parts: the raging Milky-Way starfield of Sagittarius in the lower one third - one fourth (with the globular cluster NGC 6723 in it) and the giant dark nebula filling the upper part. The latter hosts the reflexion nebulae - this is already Corona Australis. The dark nebula is very spectacular. It is better with smaller enlargemets. Practically no faint stars can be seen in it. The globular cluster is relatively bright. It isn't really resolved but it's mottled. And it has an almost stellar core. The bigger right hand side diffuse nebula is relatively bright as well. This is NGC 6726-27 around the wider double star. Its inner part has an interesting little tail. The fan shaped NGC 6729 is bright as well. IC 4812, the fainter nebula around the tighter double star is connected to the NGC nebulae. I saw some very uncertain nebulosity around the bright star to the left, the 4.8mag Epsilon CrA as well. This turned out to be non-existent, a reflexion caused by the atmosphere or the telecope. I didn't see HH 100 which looks very good in the photos. Though I didn't even willingly look for it.

Comparison with the photograph

The photo on the left, courtesy of Iván Éder was made using a 20 cm astrograph. Iván's original photograph has been rotated and cropped to show a similar area of the sky as my inverted drawing.

The photograph is obviously much more spectacular. Nevertheless the small telescope didn't leave hidden the refexion nebulae and the dark nebula. And the globular cluster wasn't that ugly either.