Sunday 4 October 2015

Deep Sky column 7/2015: NGC 7789 & NGC 7243


The original column featured NGC 7789, NGC 7243 and NGC 752 but it was cropped early on.

NGC 7789 is one of the finest open clusters in the northern hemisphere. It was discovered by Caroline Herschel on 30th of October 1789 using a modest 10 centimeter f/6.4 Newton. It features roughly 600 stars within 20' of which the brightest is 10th magnitude. Visually the object is less than 10' in size.

Loosely translated my friend Iiro described the object as "a labyrinth of dark pathways and starless regions".

NGC 7243 is an old favorite of mine. Several shapes can be discerned from the object most common one being a bird flying directly to the viewer. Brightest star in the cluster is 8.5 magnitude. Size of the object is 17' with a total number of stars visible with an 8 inch Orion DSE: ~150. Illustration (from my part) featured a sketch of NGC 7243:
4.5 " Orion SkyQuest @ 101x (30')