[AZ-Observing] Collinder 471 in Cepheus and Kemble's Cascade

Howdy all;

We had a mediocre night near Phoenix last night, by 9:30 or so the =
clouds
had moved in and we sat around and chatted for a short while and finally
gave up.

But, before all that happened, I did get a chance to do a few big open
clusters and Collinder 471 in Cepheus was the most impressive of those.  =
It
was not much in the 8X42 binoculars, just 4 stars and a difficult =
background
fuzziness.

However, in the Orion 100mm f/6 RFT refractor and a 35mm Panoptic =
eyepiece
it was very nice.  I counted 23 stars and called it bright, extremely =
large
and scattered.  This grouping is 80% of the field of view in the 35 =
Pan!!
That is a BIG cluster.  There is an interesting triple star on the =
northern
edge of the cluster.  It was split even at this low power (18X) and =
formed
an almost equilateral triangle that attracted your eye right away.

The other large grouping that I observed was Kemble's Cascade in
Camelopardalis.  It fits perfectly into the 35mm Panoptic on the 4 inch. =
 I
saw it as a chain of 21 stars with the compact cluster NGC 1502 on the =
SE
end.  The chain includes one star of about 5th magnitude and the rest =
are 6,
7 and 8 mag.  The bright star is light yellow and the rest are white.  =
This
is truly a cascade of stars diagonally across the field of view.  A
memorable object.

Clear Skies;
Steve Coe   =20


--
See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please 
send personal replies to the author, not the list.

Other related posts: