Tuesday December 3, 2024

The Double Cluster (all night)

The northeastern sky on December evenings hosts the bright constellations of Perseus and W-shaped Cassiopeia, with the very bright yellowish star Capella gleaming below them. The sky between Perseus and Cassiopeia hosts the Double Cluster, a pair of bright open star clusters that together cover a finger's width of the sky. They make a spectacular sight in binoculars or through a telescope at low magnification. The higher (more westerly) cluster, designated NGC 869, is dense and contains more than 200 white and blue-white stars. The lower (easterly) cluster NGC 884 is looser and includes a handful of 8th magnitude golden stars surrounded by many fainter ones. The clusters, which formed in the same part of the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way galaxy, are about 7,300 light-years away from us. They would be even brighter if they weren't being dimmed by opaque dust in the galactic plane.

(Data courtesy of Starry Night)
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