Clusters Nebulae Galaxies

The Double Cluster is in the constellation Perseus, quite close to the constellation Cassiopeia. It nearly marks the radiant point of the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks annually around August 12 or 13.

The Lagoon Nebula is the largest and brightest of a number of nebulosities in and around Sagittarius.

At a distance of 2.3 million light-years, the Andromeda galaxy (Messier 31) is the closest and brightest spiral galaxy to our Milky Way. Here’s how to find it.

Although long-exposure photographs show the Triangulum galaxy (Messier 33) in a beautiful pinwheel shape, this face-on spiral galaxy looks relatively lackluster in binoculars or even the telescope. The Triangulum galaxy has a low surface brightness that makes this faint object a major challenge, with or without binoculars.

Barely visible to the unaided eye on a dark, moonless night, the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16) and Omega Nebula (Messier 17) are best seen through binoculars, or low power in a telescope. These two closely-knit patches of light readily fit within the same binocular field. Star-hop to them from the Teapot in Sagittarius.

Outside on a dark summer night, looking edgewise into our galaxy’s disk, you’ll notice a long, dark lane dividing the bright starry band of the Milky Way. This is the Great Rift.

Between the star Regulus in Leo and the stars Castor and Pollux in Gemini, you might notice a smudge – really a cluster of stars – called the Beehive.

If you’ve never found a deep-sky object on your own before, M4 is a grand place to start. The M4 star cluster is easy to find, because it’s right next to Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. This is not an open star cluster or loose collection of fairly young stars. Instead, it’s a globular star cluster, a symmetrical grouping of some of the galaxy’s oldest stars.

The Great Hercules cluster (Messier 13) is considered to be the finest globular cluster in the northern half of the heavens. It’s found in a star pattern called the Keystone – a lopsided square within the constellation Hercules – between the two brightest stars of summer, Vega and Arcturus.