Back after a long time...

[Valor]

Hello all,

Its been a while since I have ventured back into the night watch... Back in high school I had the privileged of having an Meade SF 8" EQ to fiddle with. I got hooked, but after graduating, life took over.

I have recently purchased a Meade SF 10" EQ. Here I go head first back into it. I have revisited a good majority of the messier objects and looking into a little deeper viewing.

I recently dloaded the triatlas and I have to say, i am very impressed with the volumes. Only problem i have is an abbreviation in the legend...

Anyone know what ASSOC would be. I have gone over years of notes and I bet its something so simple, but yet it eludes me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

As far as the community here, i am eager to learn... See yall around..

[Atlas]

I have no idea what ASSOC means...but welcome back anyways.

[jflowers]

Usually just short for 'Association' not sure of anything else could you put it into the context it is used?

Oh and yes, welcome back

[bombassa]

A wild and very uninformed guess but grabbed this from wikipedia:

"A stellar association is a very loose star cluster, whose stars share a common origin, but have become gravitationally unbound and are still moving together through space. Associations are primarily identified by their common movement vectors and ages. Identification by chemical composition is also used to factor in association memberships."

Perhaps someone with a better guess out there?

Do you know Stellarium and Cartes du Ciel? They are very nice for a quick overview of the night sky.

[Valor]

I think that definition is what it means.

The context was in the legend of the atlas. Items such as,

GLOCL (globular cluster) OPNCL (open cluster) stuff like that.