Cassiopeia circles in the north opposite to the Big Dipper, and so near to the pole that, like the Dipper, she too never goes below the horizons of mid-northern latitudes.
Cassiopeia lies almost completely within the Milky Way's main swath of stars, embedded within some marvelous star fields. In contrast to the region around Sagittarius, which marks the center of our galaxy, in this area of the sky we are looking out toward the outer edges of our galaxy. Nonetheless, I cant think of a better place to start observing on a clear, crisp autumn night than Cassiopeia. If you own a pair of binoculars, there is excellent "sweeping" all through this part of the sky.
Star sweeping
One object that will immediately catch your attention actually belongs not to Cassiopeia, but to an adjacent pattern of stars that represents her future son-in-law, Perseus.
If you extend an imaginary line roughly 1 times the distance from the star Gamma to Delta Cass (also known as Ruchbah) and beyond, youll come across a faint blur of light which binoculars will readily reveal as two magnificent clusters of stars.
An even more beautiful spectacle awaits you with a small telescope with low power. Popularly known simply as "The Double Cluster" it is indeed one of the most brilliant telescopic sights in the sky.
Deep-sky authority Walter Scott Houston (1912-1993), who had a regular column in Sky & Telescope magazine for nearly half a century, once wrote of this part of the sky: "One can look for a long time at the many doubles, the colors, the winding patterns, as the dense cores of the cluster thin out slowly to merge finally in the star-rich background of the galaxy itself. Gazing at these clusters produces a succession of feelings too subtle and too complex to be captured by words alone."
But try not to spend all your time on the Double Cluster (as hard as that might seem to be!) for there are other fine clusters of stars intermingled within Cassiopeia.
Concentrate especially on that area between Ruchbah and Epsilon Cass for a beautiful field of stars, which includes the galactic star cluster M103, as well as a couple of nearby smaller clusters. An imaginary line extending roughly the same distance out from Alpha (also known as Schedir) to Beta (also known as Caph) Cass will lead you to M52, considered to be one of the richer and more compressed of the open star clusters and located in this rich Milky Way field.
There is also an extremely rich swarm of faint stars not too far to the west of Caph, known as NGC 7789. Discovered in 1783 by William Herschels sister Caroline, it has been described as appearing like a large cloud of small stars on a ground of stardust. In his classic observing handbook "Cycle of Celestial Objects," Admiral William H. Smyth (1788-1865) called it "a glorious assemblage . . . with spangly rays of stars . . . a vast region of inexpressible splendor."
The finding an examining star clusters can be challenging, with some persistence you'll enjoy exploring the region around Cassiopeia on dark nights. Waiting there is an amazing profusion of celestial treasures that seem especially fitting for a Queen.
advertisement
