This group or asterism of 4 stars M73 (NGC 6994) is also in Aquarius like M72 and M2.

The observatory is mostly working. It has  a pointing problem that is fixed by plate solving. Plate solving is the magic where it takes a picture and compares it to where it thinks it’s supposed to be and moves the telescope to where it is supposed to be. So I just tell it to point to M73 and the system does the rest.

I am taking these recent pictures of M objects without darks or flats or guiding to keep it simple. The light frames are the best 10 of 12 2-minute exposures stacked in Deep Sky Stacker for a total of 20 minutes. The result is developed in Photoshop. I don’t need much time because the observatory is in a dark sky community.

The question is why did Messier catalog these four small stars? It is reported that he initially saw a tiny bit of nebulosity (fuzziness) and so threw the object in the catalog.

Next is M30 nearby in Capricornus.

M73 is the 4 small stars in the center of the frame. Photo taken with a modified Canon T1i on a TEC 140 –by Mark Bailey

Astrometry.net

Astrometry.net