Recent Astronomy Articles at Cosmic Pursuits

As northern autumn turns to winter, the arc of the northern Milky Way reaches nearly overhead in the evening hours. Here we look into the Perseus Arm, the outermost spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy which is flecked by dozens of sparkling open stars clusters accessible to a small telescope. This region nearly rivals the dense star fields of Scutum and Sagittarius, summer constellations which lie towards the inner arms of the Milky Way. This month, let’s take a quick tour of a few highlights of the Perseus Arm in the constellation Cassiopeia. It’s a perfect part of the sky for visual observing or for taking a few astro-snapshots [Read more…] about Sightseeing Along the Perseus Arm

Colder weather moves in this time of year and not a leaf remains on the trees, but the longer nights mean that most of the stars of northern summer still linger. And so I found myself on a clear and chilly night in late October taking in some favorite star clusters along the spine of the Milky Way with a small refractor, while a second small scope and camera took snapshots of the same clusters.

In this month’s tour, let’s look at three of these star clusters, each in spectacular star fields. All come from the Messier list – one tight galactic cluster and two loose globulars. They make for pleasant visual inspection, and all serve as excellent targets for those of you taking snapshots of the sky with a little smart telescope like the Seestar 50 or with your own setup. I captured the live stacked images here with a 72mm refractor and ZWO 676MC camera (in case you were wondering). Each image has the same field of view, about 1 degree on an edge, which gives you a comparative view of these three clusters [Read more…] about A Tale of Three Star Clusters