by Dave North
For years I've been singing the praise of the Tirion Bright Star Atlas ... but early this year I realized I probably haven't looked at everything in it. Got other atlases, went on to different ideas and approaches
So this year i resolved to make sure I'd seen all the stuff in the Basic Manual.
One of those I somehow overlooked until last weekend was NGC 7662 in Andromeda, and it was probably a stroke of luck that I did.
Saturday was one of those weirdly wonderful nights at Fremont Peak, when the darkness set in with a vengeance but the air was soft and steady. After wandering through a bunch of other stuff (mildly interesting) I hit this gem completely unsuspected (oh, another planetary, okay).
It's incredible!
First viewing was at about 80x (yup, it's a planetary, kinda bluegreenie, what's that weird outline..?)
Up to 225x ... it's not an outline, it's a set of circles, not quite concentric ...
Up to 400x ... there are also other faint filigrees around it, and the central star is a pinpoint... tons of detail.
Akkana saw it as sort of a copyright symbol, a C shape inside a more complete arc, and dubbed it the Copyright Nebula.
This thing is supposed to be about mag 8.5 but it looks brighter. I don't know the mag on the central, but would guess it somewhere around 13.
Being the only time I've seen it, I don't know if it shows well under less steady or dark skies, but I would sincerely suggest anyone who has missed it so far (like me, duh) make it a point to visit this one.
Not your standard-issue planetary...