Perseus

NGC 1023 : Galaxy

A cracking little galaxy. Very bright and easy, almost edge-on spiral. A very bright almost stellar nucleus with a fainter halo.

M 76 : Planetary Nebula

The "Little Dumbell" nebula. At low powers it appears as a quite faint, small, slightly fuzzy, patch of light. At higher powers the box-like shape is more apparent with the lower half appearing significantly brighter. Surprisingly the OIII filter made no apparent difference.

NGC 1342 : Open Cluster

An attractive little cluster. Moderate in both size and brightness, I've counted around 25 stars. The sketch here certainly doesn't do it justice.

M 34 : Open Cluster

A large ,bright typical Messier cluster. Relatively loose, mostly composed of bright stars arranged in 'arms' with a sprinkling of fainter stars. Very pretty.

869 : Open Cluster

The famous Double Cluster or Sword Handle as it is also known. One of (if not the) best clusters in the northern hemisphere. Stunning doesn't adequately describe the view through the eyepiece! Need I say more?

1444 : Open Cluster

I've haven't, as yet, seen anything here to suggest a cluster, but there are a few nice doubles in a fairly small space which I presume is NGC1444

1496 : Open Cluster

A very small cluster, best viewed at higher powers. A nice little grouping of about 9 stars arranged in a very distinctive semi-circle. As it is reltively faint this is probably one for haze free nights.

1528 : Open Cluster

A super little cluster. This is one of those objects that makes me wonder "why didn't Messier find it?". Large and very bright with at least 50+ stars radiating out from the centre in a distinctive 'spiral arms' pattern. Excellent!

1545 : Open Cluster

An attractive, large, fairly loose cluster of around 20 stars. Noticable, but not that easy to pick out as it lies in a quite a rich field.

1513 : Open Cluster

An nice, medium sized grouping of faintish stars sitting in a quite noticable soft misty haze of stars just a little too faint to see directly. Very nice.

Zeta Persei : Double Star

An attractive pairing. Zeta is a brilliant white (2mag) star with a 9mag companion some 12" distant. Another pair of stars, although not part of this system, lie approx 30-40" distant forming a nice grouping.

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