After seemingly endless clouds, gales, rain and murk for the past few weeks, the sky finally cleared and I was able to get out and knock off some Herschels last night, 10th October.
I decided to stay entirely within the borders of Cassiopeia and the list was mostly open clusters, apart from one galaxy. I’d already done some of the H400 objects within the constellation but still had a lot more to do. I also looked at non-NGC clusters that were nearby.
Date: 10th October 2010
Conditions: Cloudless, cool (10C), no dew, a little mist
Seeing: I, excellent
Transparency: II-III
NELM: 6.2
Equipment: 12″ f/5 Dob, 22mm Televue Panoptic (69x), 15mm Televue Plossl (101x), UHC filter
NGC 129, open cluster in Cassiopeia – Large and fairly rich. Triangular with dark area cutting through it. 69x
NGC 136, open cluster in Cassiopeia – A bit of a bugger to locate as it’s faint. Round, nebulous background with a scattering of faint stars on top. Pretty boring. 69x
NGC 225, open cluster in Cassiopeia – A complete contrast to the previous cluster. Bright, large, irregular, loose cluster. 21 bright stars plus some fainter ones among the bright ones. 69x
NGC 381, open cluster in Cassiopeia – Faint, rich and round. Detached. A chain of stars goes north from the main body of the cluster. Nice. 69x
NGC 436, open cluster in Cassiopeia – In same field of view at 69x as NGC 457 (also on the H400 list, but I’d observed this at an earlier date) and they both make a lovely sight. 436 is a small knot of stars and is irregularly shaped. Fairly rich with half a dozen or so brighter stars and many more fainter ones resolved. 69x, 101x
NGC 559, open cluster in Cassiopeia – Quite rich but relatively faint. Compressed. Some brighter stars (around mag 12) superimposed on a hazy background. Nice. 69x
NGC 637, open cluster in Cassiopeia – Compact and fairly bright o.c. There are seven brighter stars, plus more in the background. Crescent shaped. There’s a double star just to the east. 69x, 101x
NGC 185, galaxy in Cassiopeia – Elongated glow, NE-SW with some concentration towards the centre. Core’s not stellar, more diffuse. Quite large. 69x, 101x
NGC 7789, open cluster in Cassiopeia – This one’s an absolute beauty. It’s very large and extremely rich in fairly faint stars. There are no bright stars anywhere in this cluster but it’s now definitely one of my favourites. The cluster is round, and the stars are all of the same, or similar, magnitudes and there’s a hazy background hinting at even more stars – there must be hundreds.
There are also dark areas, semi circular patterns and this makes the cluster look like a rose seen face on. 69x, 101x.
NGC 7790, open cluster in Cassiopeia – Small, compressed, quite faint, irregular open cluster. Extends east-west. 69x, 101x
NGC 7788, open cluster in Cassiopeia – Just north of 7790, this is a larger, looser, brighter, sparser cluster than 7790 is. Irregular. 69x, 101x
Frolov 1, open cluster in Cassiopeia – Not much to write home about! Very small and sparse. The stars are faint and scattered. 101x
Harvard 21, open cluster in Cassiopeia – A scattered faint group of 8 stars. Irregular. 69x, 101x
King 12, open cluster in Cassiopeia – A small, bright knot NW of H21. Two bright stars and a lot of fainter ones. Compressed, not rich. 69x, 101x
NGC 654, open cluster in Cassiopeia – Nice o.c. Not round but irregular. Compressed. Quite bright. Nice. 69x, 101x
NGC 1027, open cluster in Cassiopeia – Large, irregular, bright o.c. Rich. Identified by 7th magnitude star near the centre. Other stars and 5th and 6th magnitude plus many fainter ones. 69x
Melotte 15, o.c. with nebulosity in Cassiopeia – Large, irregular sparse cluster. The nebulosity is only visible with the UHC filter. 69x, UHC filter.
I packed up at 2215, after an excellent session.