TheSkySearchers

Alan - Thank you for another well written & engaging article.
It is always nice to linger in the neighborhood and meet all of the neighbors.

For a challenge throw an occulting bar on your EP & see if you can get cluster Gaia 1
https://www.universetoday.com/138402/br ... ound-gaia/

Best,
SKE

SKEtrip wrote: ↑Wed Jan 15, 2020 3:27 am Alan - Thank you for another well written & engaging article.
It is always nice to linger in the neighborhood and meet all of the neighbors.

For a challenge throw an occulting bar on your EP & see if you can get cluster Gaia 1
https://www.universetoday.com/138402/br ... ound-gaia/

Best,
SKE

Thanks for your kind comments Steve. I agree that it is nice to linger longer after one is done with the main show and see just what else may be nearby. Sometimes we can get blinders on while observing and not check the periphery.

Interesting article. Even though it is about two years old, first I'd heard of it. Also, an occulting bar comes in handy when trying to pin down Phobos and Deimos as they never wander very far from Mars!

Here is a good image of Gaia 1 from Wikipedia:



States that it is 13' in diameter and 10' east of Sirius. From browsing a discovery paper by Koposov et al from 2017, they believe it is a globular because of its characteristics. It certainly doesn't look like one in the image. A second cluster, Gaia 2, was also discovered and also believed to be a globular. There is a table with data on both and using the coordinates they provide I plugged them into Sky Tools 3 and for Gaia 2 it comes back to a position in Perseus. About 2° 9’ northeast of M76 and just north of a wide pair of stars, mag 8.8 HD 11308 and mag 9.0 HD 232553 which are aligned southeast to northwest. All interesting stuff and thanks again for bringing me up to date!

This is a link to the paper: https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/ ... 02/3828092

I read your article with growing interest. I already did some of them and some of them will get lost in the LP-skies here. Nevertheless nice to have them listed here.
Here is one another almost impossible one: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120110.html
But I suppose we could make an endless list of almost impossible objects for the amateur. Thanks for your great article!

John Baars wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2020 3:19 pm I read your article with growing interest. I already did some of them and some of them will get lost in the LP-skies here. Nevertheless nice to have them listed here.
Here is one another almost impossible one: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120110.html
But I suppose we could make an endless list of almost impossible objects for the amateur. Thanks for your great article!

Thank you John. You are of course correct. There are many more such combinations of which Leo I and Regulus in your attached image are another fine example. They serve as an excellent example of a very challenging duo. Another pairing I considered using is that of Messier 35 and NGC 2158, a very nice juxtaposition of a boldly bright cluster and a small and much dimmer one.

Old thread, but I thought I'd chime in, because it gave me an occasion to look back through some old photos. Maybe there were some details I missed.
Since I live at a northern latitude, I can barely see Antares, nor the nearby M4, and Centaurus is out of the question, but I got a hit from a photo I took of M13 a long time ago. Nice to dust that one off for a fresh look. There it is, IC4617 hiding in plain sight. I remember noticing the NGC nearby, like you had pointed out, but the other little feature had escaped me until now.
I have no hope of seeing such a small dim feature in my 5" scope by eye, but that's what the camera is for, after all.

SparWeb wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 4:15 am Old thread, but I thought I'd chime in, because it gave me an occasion to look back through some old photos. Maybe there were some details I missed.
Since I live at a northern latitude, I can barely see Antares, nor the nearby M4, and Centaurus is out of the question, but I got a hit from a photo I took of M13 a long time ago. Nice to dust that one off for a fresh look. There it is, IC4617 hiding in plain sight. I remember noticing the NGC nearby, like you had pointed out, but the other little feature had escaped me until now.
I have no hope of seeing such a small dim feature in my 5" scope by eye, but that's what the camera is for, after all.

Thanks Steven. Glad you took the time to read the article and that it gave you pause to consider some of the objects to which you can access from your northern location. Well done on picking up IC 4617. Examples like that highlight the point of slowing down a little and really looking at the view with a more critical eye.