Cepheus

[mdstuart]

I have now started to pick an area of the sky to look at rather than finding objects.

So last night was cehpeus, right overhead. Looks like a square with a triangle on top. First the double stars..

Beta - 8 very bright white primary and much fainter secondry about 3mm away at 70 deg....I always quote what I see as I have no idea of the angles to the pole , how do you work that out if your tube can rotate in the rings, someone tell me.

Then I split 17 & 27 and finally found HD 206267 which is a triple, The main star is mag 6 with two mag 8's at 10 oclock and 4 oclock... got the wife out to see this one!

Then on to the clusters..NGC 7235, NGC 7510 and NGC 7160 which were all fine groups of stars .

Finally some faint stuff..Just made out a haze of faint stars where NGC 6939 should be..I could make out stars down to about mag 11.6. But despite my best efforts NGC 6946 the spiral galaxy still eludes me :crybaby: . I really must consider getting an 8 inch??

Using the garden planting kneeler worked a charm tonight to save the knees when using the finder, also the nice little clip on light from maplins with one AAA battery in it and a paperclip rather than two AAA batteries gave a great dim light to read the charts by.

So a very productive evening, I recomend this method..

[thing]

Nice report, I've started doing the 'one evening, one constellation' thing too. Makes you look harder I think.

[lunator]

Stuart

Very nice report. :)

Cepheus is an often over-looked constellation

If you looked at Beta Cephei and caould see down to mag 11.6 you should have seen CSR1 & 2 My doubles.

Cheers

Ian