Deep Sky Observing

Articles about how to understand, find, and see celestial objects including stars, galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters with binoculars, telescopes, and the naked eye.

A Stroll Through the Stars of Capricorn

September 15, 2017 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky

The globular cluster Messier 30 as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/HST.

Along the path of the zodiac, just east and a little north of Sagittarius, lies the smile-shaped constellation Capricornus. After the gaudy splendors of Sagittarius and other northern summer constellations, Capricornus isn’t much to look at. It’s the smallest constellation of the zodiac and the second-faintest after Cancer. It has just two stars brighter than 4^th magnitude, so it’s a challenge to see this constellation in the city. But Capricornus offers several splendid alignments of stars that make for excellent viewing with a pair of binoculars on nights in August through October. Let’s have a look… [Read more…] about A Stroll Through the Stars of Capricorn

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Touring the Heart of the Milky Way – Part 2

August 18, 2017 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky

A look at the deep-sky objects in and around Sagittarius covered in this tour. Objects in white font are covered in this tour. Objects in blue font were covered in the last tour. Click to open in a new tab.

Last week, you began a tour of some of the finer sights in and around the Milky Way in the constellation Sagittarius. This week, let’s look slightly westward to see another handful of splendid sights along the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way. The tour follows the objects in the white font in the above image. Those in blue font were covered in last week’s tour.

The base of operations for this tour is the grand constellation Scorpius, the Scorpion. The long, winding constellation is one of the few that obviously resembles its namesake. The claws of the fearsome celestial arachnid face westward towards the relatively sparse star fields of the constellation Libra. At the heart of the scorpion lies the bright red-orange supergiant star Antares. And to the east lies the winding tail that passes through increasingly rich star fields towards the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy [Read more…] about Touring the Heart of the Milky Way – Part 2

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Touring the Heart of the Milky Way – Part 1

August 11, 2017 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky

The rich and gauzy star fields along the Milky Way towards the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius constitute what’s arguably the most beautiful part of the night sky. Northern observers can see these constellations well over the southern horizon in the mid-to-late evening hours in August and September, while southern-hemisphere observers see this glorious region nearly overhead. Aim binoculars or a telescope towards this part of the sky, or simply gaze in this direction on a dark night with your unaided eyes, and you will see something good. The trick is figuring out which sight is which. To help you sort it all out, here’s a step-by-step tour of a small selection of the more prominent sights of the deep sky towards the center of the Milky Way [Read more…] about Touring the Heart of the Milky Way – Part 1

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The Sombrero Galaxy

May 26, 2017 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky

Striking in photographs and picturesque in a telescope, the Sombrero galaxy offers a fine, if unusual, example of an edge-on spiral galaxy. This is a lovely object, with a huge and brilliant central galactic bulge likely caused by the machinations of a massive black hole, and an inky-dark dust lane that resembles the brim of the traditional Mexican hat that lends its name to this distant island universe [Read more…] about The Sombrero Galaxy

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Star Tour – Cor Caroli and “La Superba”

April 14, 2017 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky

An artist's rendering of the carbon star La Superba in the constellation Canes Venatici. Credit: Wikipedia Commons. — An artist’s rendering of the carbon star La Superba in the constellation Canes Venatici. Credit: Wikipedia Commons.

Turn your gaze to the sky under the handle of the Big Dipper and you’ll see only two reasonably bright stars. These are the 3rd-magnitude stars Cor Caroli and 4th-magnitude Chara. Cor Caroli (the “Heart of Charles”) was named by Edmund Halley after the martyred English King Charles I. It is a pretty double star, easily split in a small telescope even at 30-40x. The blue-white primary shines at magnitude 2.9; the fainter yellow companion is magnitude 5.6 some 19 arc-seconds away from the primary. The pair is about 110 light years away [Read more…] about Star Tour – Cor Caroli and “La Superba”

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