I use to be able to see that Globular Cluster (NGC 6723) from my yard, 30 years ago. No way now. My eyes are shot and light pollution is terrible.
The gas clouds weren’t on my charts back then as no one had anything bigger than an 8 inch scope, and, CoAs is always low here.
I am waiting for a good dark night this summer to take a stab at it again.
Back when I wanted to spend my nights stargazing, the scopes were nowhere near as good as they are now, other than specialty (expensive) stuff for academics, or hobbyist-built stuff with exquisite handmade mirrors and custom-built drives and such. Those Schmidt-Cassegrains and the like on today’s market are really dirt cheap by comparison with the stuff available back then, and have better optics, focal length, and controlling hardware. Set it up, turn it on, it figures out where on the Earth’s surface it is, and then tell it what you want to view.
And about ten years ago (uh, probably more now) the Dobsonian reflectors from Orion came out, huge things, close to being dirt cheap; and the CCDs were catching on.
I peered through the Celestron C-11 that at least used to be in the east observatory tower of the local astronomy club, and saw Saturn with its rings, just hanging out, and a little hazy (it was during the summer open house). :’)