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What's this cluster?


Swithin StCleeve

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I was observing last night, and I did a binocular scan of the area above and to the left of Sirius. I saw a small cluster, and took a photo just using my DSLR attached to my 8" mirror Skywatcher. Today, I started looking in books, thinking it must be an M number, but I'm either looking in the wrong books or loosing my mind. I can't find it.  My trusty old Cambridge Deep sky Atlas isn't coming through this time.
Here it is, there's a bright red star, and a triangle shape by it quite noticeable. It looks to be quite a loose open cluster. About two and a half field of views in 10x50 bins north west of Sirius.
 

What-Cluster.jpg


But what is it? 

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M50!

That explains why I couldn't find in in this... 51G2eRT2SqL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Which has been my 'go to' book for Messier objects. But M50 isn't in there!

Thank you so much! (I've googled an image of M50 and you can see the bright red star by the 'double' stars, that are even just about visible in my crap photo).

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Does anyone else do this? You get to a dark sky and do a binocular scan to see 'interesting stuff'. I used to draw up a list of stuff, and go by maps, but lately, I've gotten to the habit of aimlessly wandering the skies. The trouble is, like with M50, you see something, and don't know its name.

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2 minutes ago, Swithin StCleeve said:

Does anyone else do this? You get to a dark sky and do a binocular scan to see 'interesting stuff'. I used to draw up a list of stuff, and go by maps, but lately, I've gotten to the habit of aimlessly wandering the skies. The trouble is, like with M50, you see something, and don't know its name.

Download SkySafari for your phone, great help :)

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12 minutes ago, Swithin StCleeve said:

Does anyone else do this? You get to a dark sky and do a binocular scan to see 'interesting stuff'. I used to draw up a list of stuff, and go by maps, but lately, I've gotten to the habit of aimlessly wandering the skies. The trouble is, like with M50, you see something, and don't know its name.

Nothing wrong with that. Used to do it all the time and still do with my binoculars.

Anyway, as the late, great Richard Feynman famously recounted in his anecdotes, there is a difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something! 

It's yours to discover and study and behold, irrespective of what someone else calls it :) 

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13 minutes ago, Swithin StCleeve said:

Does anyone else do this? You get to a dark sky and do a binocular scan to see 'interesting stuff'. I used to draw up a list of stuff, and go by maps, but lately, I've gotten to the habit of aimlessly wandering the skies. The trouble is, like with M50, you see something, and don't know its name.

Who says its not a load of fun to just scan around and find stuff, then identify it after, gosh i had my share of that and still do it for fun.

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6 hours ago, Swithin StCleeve said:

Does anyone else do this? You get to a dark sky and do a binocular scan to see 'interesting stuff'. I used to draw up a list of stuff, and go by maps, but lately, I've gotten to the habit of aimlessly wandering the skies.

Frequently get out the 7x50s while the scope is doing its imaging-thing. Sometimes stumble across something I didn't realise was there ... sometimes just things I see in a new light (like the evening I spotted [what i call] the λ-asterism in Coma) ... keeps the sense of wonder alive ...

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7 hours ago, Swithin StCleeve said:

Nah, I'm a 'maps not apps' kind of observer ?

 

Well I don't disagree that's a fun way to observe with binoculars, but at some point if you want to know what you are looking at, a map or app is useful, no? You don't have to take it out with you, but can look stuff up after wards. Adds to the enjoyment really.

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8 hours ago, Swithin StCleeve said:

Does anyone else do this? You get to a dark sky and do a binocular scan to see 'interesting stuff'. I used to draw up a list of stuff, and go by maps, but lately, I've gotten to the habit of aimlessly wandering the skies. The trouble is, like with M50, you see something, and don't know its name.

I frequently just trawl around the sky with bins. After 40 years of observing, I generally know most bright stuff, unless my travels have taken me far south "where the stars are strange" as Aragorn puts it in the Lord of the Rings. I spent a lot of time at night in Australia and South Africa with 15x70 binoculars just trawling for the southern treasures, and then looking them up on my star atlas. Great fun. Here in the north, I sometimes amuse myself by playing "Messier Hole-In-One", which boils down to pointing the bins at the sky and having a Messier object in the FOV (extra points if close to centre). Trivial on things like the Pleiades, M42, or M31, which are naked of course, but a bit trickier on M81 and M82, or various globulars. In Virgo, it is like shooting fish in a barrel, of course, and likewise for the Scorpio-Sagittarius region.

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I did a lot of observing in my parent's garden in the 90's, and had a hiatus for a while when I moved to the city. About three years ago I bought a little caravan, and when I got out under dark skies again I realised there were great portions of the sky I knew well, and others, which were shielded by buildings where my parents lived, that I didn't know at all! I can easily find M81 & M82 straight away in 10X50's, skies permitting, but if you asked me where the Beehive Cluster is, even now, I'd have to think twice!
I was lucky enough to have three clear nights in the Elan Valley dark sky site recently, and the first night I didn't even get the scope out!
This is a three second shot with a DSLR, 50mm lens I thing. You can pisk out M31 and M33 easily. I've only ever seen M33 with the naked eye once before, in Wiltshire, in the 90's, after a rainfall.


Many-Mnumbers.jpg

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I was scanning that area the other night and the Stellarium app on my phone identified all those binocular Ms and NGCs. Much more satisfying than not knowing or grappling with maps and torches. Makes casual starhopping a lot more interesting too so highly recommended.

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5 hours ago, NGC 1502 said:

 

But Swithin StCleeve did say “maps not apps” which means........erm........he uses a map......?

Cheers, Ed.

 

I didn't want to correct him, as I'm the world's worst for miss-reading posts!

But yes, I'm not much into phone apps for astronomy. When we have observing sessions at our society there's people there with their phones in the air, trying to recognise constellations, and I often think it's not as good a way at remembering them as a map, where you have to keep  shape in your head, if you know what I mean.
And recognising the constellations is one of the pleasures of astronomy, for me. The Pleiades rising in the early hours of a late summer's night, the first glimpse of Sirius...   somehow an app telling you it's Sirius isn't as 'romantic' as a map.

That said, people who embrace and conquer technology will undoubtedly see more, and take better photos that I ever will!

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10 hours ago, Swithin StCleeve said:


I was lucky enough to have three clear nights in the Elan Valley dark sky site recently, and the first night I didn't even get the scope out!

The Dob mob have been going to Elan for a number of years now and when/ if it clears we still stand, look up and marvel at the vast amount of stars that the naked eye can see ...even with 60" of mirrors at our disposal!...can't recommend the place enough. 

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14 hours ago, Swithin StCleeve said:

When we have observing sessions at our society there's people there with their phones in the air, trying to recognise constellations

I never use my phone like that, I just use it like at star map. They are never particularly accurate when waved around, but do work to a degree.

I may be odd (definitely am! :)) but there is something about the white on black presentation which just allows me to relate more easily to phone apps than to star atlases.

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