Backyard Stargazing : Cluster Busting through Cassiopeia and Cygnus

Primary instrument used : 25x100mm giant binocular mounted on a custom parallelogram mount.

With Cygnus slowly sinking into the light-polluted west, I spent an evening taking in the sights before this area disappears for the rest of the year.

I had fruitful (and fun) observing session last night. I had been cautiously watching the weather predictions for the last two days, paying close attention to the GOES Water Vapor images.

The local weathermen had been forecasting a weak cool front of northerly air passing through our area, bringing lower temps and humidity. The front was supposed to pass through Thursday, but it stalled and a mass of moisture-laden air remained parked over our area. Finally, late yesterday afternoon, the front arrived. Suddenly the winds shifted, and a cooler breeze blew in from the north. The temperature dropped slightly and the air began to dry out. That development was promising, so I decided to watch the weather carefully, online and outside in the yard.

Strangely, almost everything online predicted horrible observing. The Clear Sky Clock showed significant cloud cover, poor transparency and poor seeing. GOES AOD models showed a very poor aerosol optical depth (AOD), which is a good gauge of transparency. EPA air-quality monitoring stations were also showing poor air quality readings with high levels of ozone and particulates. So, the online computer models predicted bad observing, but mother nature and my own gut told me "maybe".

As late afternoon wore on, the sky was generally clear and blue with a few passing clouds. When the sun did finally set, the sky looked like it does on the majority of summer nights - clear but too hazy to observe. Everything low on the horizon in all directions was whitish-hazy soup. But directly overhead, the strip of sky around the zenith was very clear and dark by contrast. Around 9:00pm, when the sun had finally and fully set, a breeze picked up again and some of the haziness began to clear. I went inside and made one last check of the GOES Water Vapor image. Sure enough, the trough of dry air had finally dipped down just into our local area (just barely!) ... A region of dark black sitting over the SE United States was clearly visible on the image, contrasting against the patchwork of white sworls and masses around it. My sky was inside the clear black area, near the western boundary of this dry air mass.

I gathered up all of my gear, went outside, set up my blackout blinds and started getting my vision dark adapted.

This time out I brought my new S&T Pocket Atlas, planisphere, notepad, red-light pen, cigar, 8x42 binocular, and a 4-pack of Starbucks chilled Frappucinos.

The Celestron Skymaster 25x100 was mounted, as usual, on the AstroWood HD parallelogram and Raytheon heavy surveyor.

I have no view of the western horizon from my backyard. In fact, the entire western sky is unusuable due to a mixture of trees, power poles/lines, buildings, streetlights, and skyglow. So, once a constellation passes the zenith and begins to sink into the west, it is totally lost to me until next season. Unless I take a ride out to another observing site, which is rare. Cygnus is now in the "endangered" position - at sunset it is already near the zenith, and by 10:00pm it is already starting it's westward march. So, if I want to catch Cygnus now, I have to be setup and ready to go as soon as darkness falls. Given the poor observing weather that has dominated this summer, I knew last night might be my last chance to get a good look at Cygnus before next year. I was determined to spend some quality time with the Swan, and that was going to mean - neck torture.

While having a parallelogram mount is a boon, and it generally makes observing much easier, it does little to alleviate the neck/spine torture that is associated with viewing targets near/on the zenith. Even though the binocular is suspended above my head and off to the side of the tripod, it is still necessary to sit under the binocular and crane one's neck all the way back to see through the eyepieces. While my neck is in good physical condition, I cannot maintain such a position for more than a few short minutes at a time without looking away and stretching. Bearing this in mind, I took a preventative dose of ibuprofen and a shot of Kentucky bourbon to dull the pain in advance.

While waiting for my eyes to dark adapt, I did some free-wheeling around the sky. I did sweeping scans of the area in and around the Summer Triangle of Altair, Deneb, and Vega. All three of these bright beacons have aesthetically-pleasing starfields around them, and it is a pleasure just to casually sweep through and let the random strings and dots guide the eye : doubles, clumps, knots, helixes, strings, and the occasional lone star isolated from the rest by an apparent inky moat. There is a strange order to the randomness, if that makes any sense. That sense of order arises from a mass of coincidental alignments dictated by my orientation to the sky, and then my brain sets to work making sense out of the vast vistas of points by arranging them into strings and clumps. At any rate, before I digress to the point of making no sense at all, let's just say I had a lot of fun waiting for my dark adaption to complete itself.

Finally, I began to notice that fainter and fainter stars were coming into view. My dark adaption was complete, so I set out to find some old friends. First, I concentrated on Cygnus.

Cygnus is an area of the sky that can be quite rewarding (to say the least) for an observer blessed with dark skies and big aperture. Cygnus is a region packed with DSO targets of all types from all catalogs. But, limited to 25x magnification, twin 100mm of aperture, and NELM 4.4 skies, many of those targets are either invisible or appear as stellar. Given that Cygnus was near the zenith, I decided against hunting down any new objects. Instead, I visited old friends. Albireo was a treat, as always.

M39 is a cluster that would be more impressive, were it not placed in such beautiful surroundings. The entire area around Deneb (in the direction of Lacerta and Cepheus) is absolutely splendid at lower power in a wide-field view. Attempting to do a star count on M39 would be futile for this novice observer. Likewise for identifying some of the many NGC/IC open clusters in this area, which includes : NGCs 7044, 7039, 7062, 7082, 7209, 7243, 7086, 7128, and IC 1369. Two of these, NGC 7209 and 7243 are on the AL Deep Sky Binocular list, so I must return here eventually to positively identify these two clusters.

What I said about M39 also holds true for M29. Although M29 by any measure is less impressive than M39, it still suffers from the "problem" - being surrounded by packed star fields full of gems and jewels. In this context, M29 is a tiny sprite of cluster, lost in a sea of glittering points.

While looking at my Pocket Atlas charts (chart 73 in this case), I took a moment to chuckle inwardly at the masses of nebulae plotted on the chart. Betwixt Sadr and Cepheus, there are several nebulae that are considering spectacular (or at least interesting) under dark skies. All of these tenuous targets were completely obliterated by urban skyglow and my chances of glimpsing them (even under averted vision) were nil. I sighed and moved on.

Recalling Steve Coe's "What's Up Cepheus", I decided to linger and lollygag around the House of Cepheus for a while. Cepheus is another constellation that I am just beginning to get familiar with. My stargazing career, up until then, has concentrated on the areas of the sky that my local observing limitations dictate. My best views are to the east and south. West is off limits and north is partially obstructed. Cepheus is one of those areas that is sometimes obstructed by my house or by a large crape myrtle tree in our backyard. As the night wore on, Cassiopeia and Cepheus were revealed from behind the tree and I could see the majority of both constellations.

So I went for the heart of Cepheus and started sweeping around the inside of the "house". I suspected NGC 7142, although I am not sure because it's integrated magnitude is quite faint (9.3) and it's brightest members are 3 mag-10 stars, while the rest are fainter than 12. I cannot say I saw this object, but I definitely suspected a tiny little knot of "something" right where this object is plotted in the atlas.

I also saw a miniature Cassiopeia asterism in Cepheus. It looked exactly like a smaller version of the "W" shape in Cass. It was quite pleasing and I vaguely recall it being mentioned somewhere on CN.

Without knowing what it was or what it looked like, I tried to find Herschel's Garnet Star, which is plotted on the chart. I expected to see a red star, but I didn't see one. No red, no garnet, or anything in-between. At least, not that I could see. But I did spy a pretty little blue-white tight double in the general vicinity.

Cygnus called me back, so I wandered back over to the Swan and visited Albireo again. Then I took a short hop to have a look at the Coathander (Cr399). I counted no less than 20 stars, but don't quote me on that. I tried not to include field stars, but determing which was which was not easy. A tiny knot of faint stars nearby was NGC 6802. From the edge of the field, with averted vision, it appeared nebulous. It caught my eye as I looked away from Cr399. When I looked directly at it (or more directly) it lost the appearance of nebulosity and it appeared as 3 faint stars in roughly triangular arrangement. With effort and averted vision, 3 or 4 more very faint members would reveal themselves for fleeting moments. I think I saw 7 in total. 6802 is not much to write home about at 25x, but it's an easy target to bag given it's proximity to Cr399. At mag 8.8, it's brightest members are in the mag-11 to mag-13 range. This cluster is rich in very faint members (according to reports), and I feel confident I did see it with full dark adaption and knowing exactly where to look. Also, descriptions of the surrounding field, including the dispositon of a nearby double, helped confirm the sighting.

ZOOM! A bright meteor streaked through from the direction of Vulpecula and I followed eastward across the sky until it vanished into the murky skyglow low on the eastern horizon. It was a bright burnt-yellow ball of light, not visible to naked eye, but plainly visible in the 25x100 binocular. This was about 10:45pm.

I traced my way back to the area of the Coathanger and while panning around I stumbled across M71. While not particularly impressive, it did reveal itself as an obvious fluff ball of faint bluish-white light. Typical faint fuzzy. But, it was a new target for me. So it upped my Messier total to 52. (There was much rejoicing...)

I am not 100% sure I was looking in the right place for M27. I need to do my homework a little more on M27 before trying to detect it again. I had not planned on hunting down new targets, but I took the opportunity to do so when given the chance. In the case of M27, I figured I would go for it. I had accidentally found M71 without trying, and M27 is not far away, so I repeatedly scanned the area trying to locate it. I laid out a mental search grid and systematically did long sweeps through each part of the grid. I'd stop and apply averted vision, looking for subtle variations in the sky background that might betray a faint object. But I saw nothing I could positively identify.

Since planetaries were the order of the day (or moment), I decide to try for M57 again. M57 is a tough target in my skies, and I figured I'd use it to gauge my chances with M27. I wheeled around into Lyra, and there it was. Faint, and nearly stellar, but unmistakable. Then, without thinking, and for no apparent reason, I swung around and looked right at Vega. My dark adaptation winced. I looked away and saw a colorful little phantom Vega spot in my field of vision. Great. I had damaged my adaptation by looking straight at a Mag 0 star. Duh. I took this as a cue to take a little break. I got up, stretched my aching back, and rubbed my neck which was protesting quite fiercely. I also noticed that my Stellarvue RDF was starting to dew up. My objectives and eyepieces were OK though (4" dew shields on the objectives helps) ...

I closed one eye, walked out from behind the blind, and went to retrieve the reclining lounge chair. I dragged it through the yard to the dark area behind the blind. Then I kicked my feet up and relaxed. Closing both eyes, I lit my cigar, and took up the 8x42 Bushnell Audubons for some casual sweeping. I reclined back as far as I could go and scanned many of the exact same areas I had just previously done with the 25x100. For comparison, I re-visited some of the same targets to compare the views.

M31 was easily visible through the little handhelds. It was smaller, of course, and no trace of the extended halo or arms was seen.

Mel 20, the Alpha Persei Association was quite interesting in the 8x42. In the 25x100 it appears as a well-populated and sprawling cluster that defies containment in a restricted 2.5 degree FOV. In the 8x42, it appears as an elongated chain of stars, something like a helix, that runs from N to S. It looked like a flowing stream of stars. I actually liked the view better through the 8x42, for it had the context of the surrounding fields and a more coherent aesthetic.

About this time I caught another meteor. This one did not appear as bright as the first (although the first was viewed at 25x100), and it was not naked eye. It appeared to originate from Camelopardalis in the north and streaked towards the south. I watched it until it passed directly overhead and behind me. Neither of the nights meteors showed any fragmentation or sparks.

I resumed my hand held scans, passing through Cepheus, Cassiopeia (where I could not discern NGC 457 through the 8x42), Andromeda, Perseus, and back to Cygnus which was now past the zenith and slipping slowly into the western murk. For kicks I turned to Albireo and it was suspected strongly, but the swaying of my arms refused to allow a clean split. I sank further down into the chair and brought the binos directly against my brow line, letting the rolled up eyecup sit just above my glasses. Holding the tubes by the objectives, and bracing my elbows on the armrests, I was able to cleanly split Albireo at 8x! It was tiny, the golden hue a little less golden than in the 25x100, but it was split into two clean points barely seperated by the thinnest of margins.

After another 20-30 minutes of casual scanning, I planned on getting back to the 25x100. But when I got out of the chair, my back groaned. The ibuprofen and bourbon (strictly for medicinal purposes mind you) had worn off and now I could the feel effects of 2+ hours riding the zenith. My whole rig was covered in a fine misting of dew, so I decided to pack it in. It took me about 10 minutes to break everything down in the dark (which is quite routine now that I do it mindlessly while naked eye stargazing and ruminating on my night's observations), then I had one last look at towards the east before going in.

Thanks for reading and clear dark skies...

MikeG

All of my science-related articles : https://steemit.com/@galacticstone

Image credits : All photos by me, Michael Gilmer.