CalStar - first foray away from the Messiers.

by Mark Bracewell

In and around Perseus...

NGC 1245 - OC - Broad faint rich scatter bracketed by similar sized (~10 arcmins) dark patches.

NGC 1275 - Gx - very faint N-S ellipse with hints of others to south and west. Very happy to see later in DSS image that there are indeed others nearby, a whole plethora of 'em! Need to revisit this and spend some more time.

NGC 1342 - OC -a nice dozen or so of similar mag with a rich background of fainter stars. Carter Sholz loaned me his new 34 mm Seibert wide angle EP just then, a very nice view, nice EP. Thanks Carter! He detected a little astigmatism at the edge of the fov before I did, but even so, a worthy match against say a 35 panoptic at something like half the price and half the weight too probably.

NGC 1528 - OC - Seemed very similar to 1342 but twice the size, perhaps 20 arcmins.

NGC 1513 - OC - Nice little cluster with the brighter foreground stars making an interesting asterism like the kind of device one might find between paragraphs in a turn of the century art nouveau pamphlet.

NGC 1023 - Gx - elongated - to about 8 arcmins by 3, _very_ bright core, almost like a star there.

NGC 925 - GX - DNF, some weird mottling in the area, perhaps the fov too small to see it, dunno, it's a mystery, I should have been able to find it after 20 mins. shrug.

and Cassiopeia...

NGC 281 - OC + N - very faint nebulosity - too big to appreciate in my largest (25mm plossl) ep.

NGC 457 - OC - wonderful strings of stars with 2 very bright ones nearby

and Capricornus...

NGC 7009 - PN - Saturn nebula - really fantastically bright blue with a fat teardrop shape superimposed on a ring shape. Didn't see the ansae (didn't look, didn't know they were there, need to do better prep work).

NGC 6818 - PN - Little gem. Another really bright one, paler blue, smaller than 7009, with darker center, not as well defined as M57, more bagel than donut. Really pretty.

NGC 6907 - DNF

and Aquarius, Cetus and Sculptor...

NGC 7293 - PN - Helix - very large, C-shaped big fuzzy ring. Need to go back and spend time on this.

NGC 246 - PN - Nice asterism of 5 stars with what seemed to be reflection neb. Couldn't make out the PN shape really.

NGC 247 - Gx - edge on, no well defined core, embedded bright star. Probably my first really faint fuzzy.

NGC 253 - Gx - Very, very nice view, large flattened oval, 2 faint emb. stars. maybe 30 arcmins long by 8. Like a galaxy should look. NGC 288 - GC - large cluster, dozens of resolvable stars, many many more faint ones there.

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Also observed:
Jiffy Pop wrist action - really quite impressive.
Finally met Mark Mickels, machinist extraordinaire, after a couple years of online acquaintance, and saw his remarkable Orson scope.
A really excellent CalStar. Thanks to all.