September 10, 2010 – M’s in Perseus and Andromeda

I took another stab at the plan I had from last time. It is a beautiful night tonight, dark and clear. I observed from about 9 – 11pm.

Observations

• NGC 869 & NGC 884 – Double Cluster in Perseus is easy to find now – Follow Alpha – Gamma – Eta Per and there it is. Very nice in the 25mm EP, which is 48X – both clusters fill the view.
• NGC 957 – I think I saw this open cluster — right near the double. Stars are so plentiful in this area of the sky that it’s difficult to distinguish the smaller clus
  

  Image via Wikipedia

  ters.

• NGC 744 – Same as 957 – a bit further on the other side of the double cluster.
• M34 – Open cluster in Perseus. In the finder, I found the triangle of stars made by Beta (Algol), Rho, and 16-Per, and then easily saw the cluster ‘above’.
  

  Image via Wikipedia

• M76 – Little Dumbell planetary nebula — It took me a while to figure out which star is Phi Per, but once I found it, it wasn’t difficult to find M76. This planetary nebula is quite faint!
  

  Image via Wikipedia

• M31 – The Andromeda Galaxy — this thing is huge! I couldn’t resolve any texture in the spirals, but the center is obvious. This was easy to find, starting with the Great Square (the body of Pegasus) and the Alpha And star (Alpheratz, a corner of the square). Then, finding Beta And (Mirach),  following Mu and Nu, and then in the same direction the galaxy.
• M32 – This galaxy is easy to spot since it is so close to M31. It’s smaller but still quite bright. It’s just about in the same view of the 25mm EP
• M110 – This is easy to spot as well, being a bit further away from M31, but it is much fainter. It is bigger than M32 though.
• M33 – Triangulum Galaxy. I figured out where Triangulum is, and then found
  

  Image via Wikipedia

  Alpha Tri (Mothallah) in the finder. M33 is about 4 degrees away, so I fairly easily panned to it. It seemed pretty faint – I expected to see more detail….will have to research more.

Related Articles

• What is a Galaxy, Anyway? (astrobasics.blogspot.com)

September 5, 2010 – Perseus planned

11:30 pm, back deck

Conditions:
no clouds, dark sky, a bit hazy, cold

Scope:
150mm/1200mm dob

The plan

Some of the dso’s in Perseus:

• NGC 957 – open cluster mag 7
• NGC 884 & NGC 869 – Double Cluster
• NGC 744 – open cluster mag 7
• M34
• M76  (Little Dumbell) planetary nebula

Starhop:  Alpha — Gamma – -Eta Per –957 — Double Cluster — 744

Starhop: Beta — Pi — 12 Per — M34

Starhop: Phi Per — M76

Observations

Image via Wikipedia

• Double Cluster: Starhopped Alpha Gamma Eta through the finder scope, then aimed at what I thought would be NGC 957, but nothing showed through the dob — scanned around a bit and came upon the Double Cluster. Very Nice! Alone each cluster would be cool and together they are breathtaking. They filled the view of the 25mm EP.
• I tried to find NGC 957 in the finder scope and when I aimed at what looked like it, it turned out not to be in the scope. I would aim the finder scope at the double cluster, but they wouldn’t appear on the scope. I checked the finderscope alignment using Vega — alignment was way off! I aligned using Vega and then all is good….
• Jupiter: By this time (12:30) I’m too tired to star hop, so I looked at Jupiter for a bit. Very nice view — I can see 3 bands, but not  the great red spot. 3 moons are visible, the fourth is behind Jupiter I suppose, since I see no shadow.

Note to self: check alignment at the beginning of the session!