The house of Cepheus.

[cotterless45]

Just in from a near perfect 3 hours of clear sky. Jupiter got up, very brightly, about 2am.The moons strung out like beads and the belts defined , even so low in the sky.

Cygnus started off overhead with Cepheus at it's tail. Cepheus in house shaped and parallel to Cassiopeia.It's packed full of good stuff.The roof of the house points to thePolaris area.

The Garnet star lies at the base , just shy and below middle. You can pick out by eye, it always looks yellowish in the scope to me.

The bottom left hand corner, I always call the rubbish, is packed with open clusters, it does look confusedby eye;

NGC7261 and 7235 are open clusters, the latter having a nice red star in the centre.

NGC6939 is a rich cluster and NGC7160 is just a small group of 6 stars, both are to the rhs of Alderamin.

The centre of Cepheus is worth a look , with red giant below the central white and yellow binary Alkurhah, split at x120.Nearby is the faint NGC7129 with some nebulosity and NGC7142, a small cluster .

The central area is quite packed with stars , cute with low magnification.

Over to the lhs of the house, M52 is in direct line with the end stars and very easily picked out, it's dense, but bright.Again there are some dense star fields here.

Below the Garnet star is Trumpeter37 ( large open cluster) and IC1396(Elephant Trunk Nebula), there were signs of nebulosity around the cluster .

There's loads more clusters and reflection nebs in the area. I was restricted by gear, there being

NGC188,NGC6946, NGC40 and a few more down to Lacerta.

I used a 130p Heritage on a tripod mount, with Bst Explorers 5mm, 12mm and 25mm and a 40mm plossl.

It was really great to get such fine views from my very first serious scope. being so light, it was easy to move around the garden to avoid trees and houses.The red dot finder is simple and easy to use.

I finished up with a scan of Perseus and Pegasus, picking out M15 out from Enif. A small dense globular.

[Mike73]

Sounds like you had a good night Nick and thanks for the heads up on some interesting objects.

[JamesF]

Nice report Sounds like your tripod mod works nicely, too.

James

[cotterless45]

Ta, it's easy to use to observe at the zenith. Certainly beats the old equatorial zenith dance!

I got the tripod off fleabay for £10.

Perhaps SW should sell this set up; a tridob!

Nick.

[webboid]

Nice report

I may pay a visit to this area

Sounds interesting

[KevUU]

Thanks for that Nick; it's really nice to get some concentrated detail sometimes rather than a scatter-gun sprint of Messiers.

I've not looked around Cepheus yet - and unfortunately my view anywhere N of E is blocked so it may have to wait a little... (pfffff)

[andrew63]

Yes, it's good to have a report like this from one area - and with modest equipment shows how much there is to observe. The Cepheus area has not been on my radar also, so thanks for your report.

andrew