19/01/2022
Zion National Park has one of the most recognizable skylines on earth... Can you name the mountains shown here? Check out this great guide on how to spot constellations and star clusters with just a pair of binoculars.
✨ See the star clusters in Perseus ✨
The Perseus’ location straddling the outer reaches of the Milky Way has filled this constellation with rich star clusters that are perfect for binoculars. The largest of these surrounds the bright star Mirfak or Alpha Persei.
🌟 The open star cluster Melotte 20, also known as the Alpha Persei Moving Group and the Perseus OB3 Association, is a collection of about 100 young, massive, hot B and A-class stars spanning 3 degrees of the sky. The cluster can be seen with unaided eyes and improves in binoculars. It is approximately 600 light-years from the sun and is moving through the galaxy as a group.
🌟 Aim your binoculars midway between Mirfak and Cassiopeia’s W, the realm of the Double Cluster. These two open star clusters, each 0.3 degrees across and approximately 0.45 degrees apart, form a spectacular one-degree-wide sight in binoculars or a telescope at low magnification. (That’s twice the width of the Full Moon!)
🌟 The more westerly cluster NGC 869 is slightly closer to Cassiopeia. It is more compact and contains more than 100 white and blue-white stars. NGC 884, the easterly cluster, is a bit more sparse and contains a handful of 8th magnitude golden suns. Use your telescope to see their double stars, mini-asterisms, and dark lanes of missing stars. The two clusters are inside the Perseus Arm of our Milky Way galaxy, about 7,300 light-years from the Sun. Their visual brightness has been dramatically reduced by opaque interstellar dust in the foreground.
Adapted from Chris Vaughan
