#5: THE DOUBLE CLUSTER OF PERSEUS

If you look high in the northwest, you’ll be able to see the zig zag row of five bright stars forming the constellation of Cassiopeia, the Queen.

If you extend an imaginary line roughly 1½ times the distance from the star Gamma to Delta Cass (also known as Ruchbah) and beyond, you’ll come across a faint blur of light which binoculars will readily reveal as two magnificent clusters of stars.

Popularly known simply as "The Double Cluster," it supposedly marks the location of the Sword Handle of Perseus, and one of the most brilliant telescopic sights in the sky.

NGC 869 and 884 (h Persei and Chi Persei respectively) are magnificent through binoculars or the low-power field of a small telescope; a pair of glorious open clusters, each of which would be beautiful by itself. The overall diameter of each cluster is about 45 arc minutes, or about one-third larger than the apparent diameter of the Moon. So you should use very low powers to get both clusters together in the same field of view. Much higher powers will cause the star field to be spread-out and not as impressive.

Close inspection with a good telescope will reveal a fine ruby-colored star near the center of 884.

Wrote Walter Scott Houston: "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."

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