Observations


Date/Time : 2001-11-07T21:00:00-05:00
Observer : Peter C. Chapin
Equipment :
Location :

Tonight was another beautiful night. I went out with my 7x50 binoculars to look around at about 9:00pm EST. The sky was perfectly clear and dark. The moon, which was out last week had not yet risen. Jupiter was not yet up either although Saturn was.

M-31 in And was easily visible to the naked eye (as usual). In the binoculars it looked striking. M-33 in Tri was also easy to see in the binoculars and quite interesting looking. I could almost imagine myself seeing some structure. I noticed that there were a few stars "involved" with the galaxy and that added considerable interest. I tried to see M-33 with my naked eye but I was unable to make it out. I did, however, see the relatively bright star just to the ESE of the galaxy. According to my AAVSO atlas that star is magnitude 6.0.

NGC-752 in And (not far from the Tri border) is quite a nice sight in binoculars. It also appeared to be visible to the naked eye. However, the cluster is near an unrelated grouping of relatively bright stars and those stars might have caused the cluster to appear brighter than it actually is.

I scanned around in Per and easily saw NGC-1528, an open cluster in the Eastern arm of the constellation. It looked like it would be an impressive site in a telescope. I also went searching for NGC-1245 in Per, not far from Alpha. I did notice a faint, fuzzy, fan shaped cloud that seemed to be attached to a moderately bright star. I notice on my Sky Atlas 2000 that I was looking in exactly the right location so I think it is fair to say that I saw the cluster. However, it was not very interesting in the binoculars.

I attempted to see M-1 (the Crab Nebula) in Tau as part of my effort to observe as many Messier objects as possible with binoculars. I was definitely unsuccessful. I did observe Saturn a bit. The planet was too small to show any detail in the binoculars, but I noticed that it is quite near to the cluster NGC-1647. The view was very pleasing. NGC-1647 is a nice binocular object all by itself and having Saturn so close by added a lot of interest.

I spent some time scanning around in Aur. I saw some of the same objects I saw during my last session (2001-10-28), but the moonless sky made them seem considerably more impressive: M-37, M-36, and M-38 were all easy. I saw a small fuzzy blob that I'm fairly sure was NGC-1907 (near M-38). I also spotted the small cluster NGC-1778 in the binoculars... but with some difficulty.

To the south of M-38 there is a significant association of stars that looks in the binoculars just like a cluster. However, it doesn't appear to be marked as such on any of my charts. The cluster NGC-1893 is shown in the area on Sky Atlas 2000 but based on what the atlas shows, it seems like it would be too small to explain what I saw in the sky. I'll have to inspect this area with a telescope at the next opportunity.