Bino Session - 26 October 2008

[asteria]

Hi there - got the Meade's out again as the skies cleared down here after sunset. I would have rated the sky as about average, seeing and transparency wise, with 2 going on 3 mag. visibility. However, the views seemed to be pretty good, so maybe I haven't got my ratings quite right.

I ran through the objects that I've been looking at recently. Most of them seemed a bit more difficult to track down and see - M13 is now really too low in the sky in the early evening to strike much of an impression. M92 is still OK. The Dumbbell Neb and M15 and M2 were less visible in the binos than in my last sessions.

I turned my attention to Perseus and Cassiopeia. This part of the sky is now getting quite high in the north-east so the sky is relatively dark, despite the glow from the town. Alpha Per and the lovely wide cluster (Mel 20) was very spectacular again. The Double Cluster is really gaining height now, and is coming into its own with binos. This was the best view that I have had of the pair in binos, with a number of stars resolvable using averted vision. Both clusters were bright and clear. M34 showed a bright glow, with a few stars resolving using a.v.

I began scanning around the area and got onto a bit of a roll with open clusters. I've never really picked up the less prominent clusters before, but began to haul in a number of the NGC ones. By the end of the session I had glimpsed:

NGC 1502 in Camelopardalis

NGC 1545 in Perseus

NGC 663 and 654 in Cassiopeia

NGC 457 in Cassiopeia

Along the way, M103 and Stock 23

The NCG clusters just showed as faint star glow, with a small number of stars resolving with averted vision. NGC 457 is a nice object, with a star very close so the cluster seems to glow with starlight. Anyway, I'm getting a bit more confident now with some of the less 'famous' deep sky objects; it's quite satisfying to track them down in binos.

Thanks for reading. Let's hope for more clear skies.

Ed

[Foo Fita]

Nice report Ed.

I have been using the bino's a lot more recently. It is definately helping me to learn the sky more.

[MarkR]

Lovely report, that part of the sky is great for scanning with binos. It was good fun last year tracking Comet Holmes past the open clusters in Perseus. By the way, do you think NGC457 looks like a stickman with two bright eyes?

Mark

[Doc]

Thats a lovely report.

Look forward to some more.

[Neon]

Nice report Ed. I'll give the double cluster a go with my binoculars tonight (skies willing).

Cheers

Mark