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Constellations:
Cassiopeia

Gen: Cassiopeiae
Abb: Cas
Dec: +46.4 deg to +77.5 deg
RA:  22h 56m to 3h 36m
Area Covered: 598 square degrees

For this month's constellation I have picked the Queen of Ethiopia, as she rides in her throne high overhead. Cassiopeia is the large "W" almost straight up and to the north in the early part of November. Although this location may cause some problems for fork mounted telescopes, it is the best time of the year to see many of the tiny clusters located there. With Cassiopeia high in the sky you will be looking through the least amount of atmosphere and less turbulence. This is very important since several of the clusters are very small and blend in to the rich star fields in this area.

Queen Cassiopeia is part of the royal family in the sky, along with Cepheus her husband and King to the northwest, Andromeda her daughter to the south, and the hero Perseus to the southeast. All of these constellations, as well as Pegasus and either Draco or Cetus (depending on which source you consult), are deeply intertwined in Greek mythology.

For those who sat through 2+ hours of "Clash of the Titans" on the Planetarium's big screen in March, or have seen this movie in the past, you have the full story in all of Hollywood's splendor. If you have not seen the movie, the very short form of the story goes like this.

Cassiopeia was extremely vain and she boasted that she was more beautiful than the Nereids. The Nereids were the very beautiful Sea Nymphs, who were very close to Poseidon. To punish Cassiopeia, Poseidon sent a sea monster called the Kracken to destroy the city and ravish the coast. King Cepheus journeyed to the oracle and asked what he needed to do to stop the destruction, he was told that he had to sacrifice Andromeda to the Kracken in order to appease the gods.

Meanwhile Perseus was off on a quest to get the head of Medusa to use against the Kracken. In the movie Perseus was able to get Pegasus early in the story, but in the version I read, Medusa's body became Pegasus after her head was chopped off. Either way he got Medusa's head and flew back just in the nick of time to kill the monster and save Andromeda.

Exploring in Cassiopeia

For this month's star hops I recommend a low power wide field eyepiece to make it easier to pick out the clusters from the background stars.

To start find Caph (11Beta Cas) at the western end of the flattened "W". Move your scope so that Caph is on the southern edge of the finder scope to find 3 open clusters. These clusters will be in the northwest part of the finder scope. The clusters are NGC7788, NGC7790 and Harvard 21. NGC7790 appears as a fuzzy patch with about 30+ stars. It is a nice sight compared to NGC7788, which consists of 5 stars with a very little nebulosity around a 9th magnitude star. I was not able to confirm Harvard 21 when I tried looking for it. My books say it is six stars; if you find it let me know.

Move your scope so that NGC7788 is to the eastern side of your finder and you should have M-52 (NGC7654) on the west edge. M-52 has over a hundred stars in a small area with somewhat of a "V" shape. Use the V shape as a pointer to find NGC7789. Located just under two finder scope fields SSW of M-52, NGC7789 is a beautiful sight. Being just about the size of a full Moon, use a wide field eyepiece and it looks like tiny diamond chips spread over black velvet. Be sure and look for the dark rope lines running all through this cluster.

Return to Caph and continue one more finder field in the same direction. In your finder at this point you should have 7 or 8 small clusters NGC103, NGC189, NGC136, NGC133, NGC146, ST24 and probably NGC225. At Peddler Hill I know I was in the right area, but determining if I had each of these clusters in my eyepiece was next to impossible. I hope you have better luck than I did. I was able to confirm NGC129 just to the south and almost dead center between Caph and Cih. This cluster has about 30 stars and is rather large but not very special looking. NGC133 is described as being a line of 5 to 7 stars among many lines of stars in the area.

The chart shows two more clusters in the same field as Cih, NGC381 and 366. I was not able to locate either of these clusters in my 10" scope.

Moving on to Ruchbah, orient your finder so that Ruchbah (37 Delta Cas) is located in the southern part to find M103 (NGC581) Tr1 NGC659, NGC663 and NGC654. I was able to locate these in my finder, but with the exception of M103 they were not very well defined in my telescope. M103 appears to me like an arrowhead of stars pointing to the Northeast. Tr1 (Trumpler 1) appeared as two lines of stars. NGC663 would be a dud for me except that the first thing to catch your attention are two groups of two stars that look like eyes in a dark forest. I couldn't help but think about a scene from my daughter's "Snow White" video.

For those of you with larger scopes than mine, you can continue north for NGC559, NGC637 and NGC609. By this point I had had enough very faint clusters so I headed south to find an old friend.

Move your scope so that Ruchbah is on the northern edge of your finder and NGC457 will be close to the center. NGC457 is the owl and is a fun sight at any time of the year. With his big bright eyes and his wings spread wide he made a nice end to a several hour-long trip through Cassiopeia.

Happy Star Hopping...Eric

Copyrighted © 2000 by Stockton Astronomical Society
Lasted Updated: 12/1/2000
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