Sky & Telescope - November 2023 - 54

RON BRECHER
NOVEMBER 2023 OBSERVING
Suburban Stargazer by Ken Hewitt-White
Double Cluster Country
The famous side-by-side cluster pair in Perseus is a gateway to nearby starry targets.
I
n northernmost Perseus you'll find
a two-for-one treasure: NGC 884
and NGC 869, together known as the
Double Cluster. They're a glittering
deep-sky duo spanning nearly 1° of
prime celestial real estate. Gleaming at
magnitudes 6.1 and 5.3, respectively,
these notable NGCs are even visible to
the unaided eye.
Look for the Double Cluster by using
neighboring Cassiopeia's helpful W pattern.
Simply extend a line from Gamma
(γ) Cassiopeiae east-southeastward
through Delta (δ) by roughly twice the
separation between the stars, and you'll
land a tad north of the clusters. The
W-to-DC star-hop never fails.
Spotting the DC naked-eye is easy in
a dark rural sky, but I can't glimpse it
54 NOVEMBER 2023 * SKY & TELESCOPE
at all through my suburban soup. Even
10×50 binoculars only cough up two
gritty lumps with very few stars. Thankfully,
telescopes do way better, even
from town. Let's take a look.
Double Cluster Details
I examined the Double Cluster and
its surroundings last autumn with a
4.7-inch (120-mm) f/7.5 apochromatic
refractor and an 8-inch f/6 Newtonian
reflector. To start off, I employed a wideangle
30-mm eyepiece that yields 30× in
the refractor and 41× with the reflector.
The low-power view in each scope was
fab: two star-packed clusters lined up
east-west in the star-rich Perseus Milky
Way. Of course, the twin clusters aren't
identical twins - a fact that became more
TWO-FOR-ONE DEAL NGC 884 (left) and
NGC 869 (right) form the stunning Double
Cluster in Perseus. NGC 884 is approximately
8,200 light-years from Earth, while NGC 869 is
about 100 light-years more distant. Together
they contain some 600 blue-white suns only
14 million years old. In contrast, the five bright,
reddish-orange pinpoints accompanying NGC
884 are all supergiant variable stars of spectral
class M - astronomers don't know for certain
if the fiery five physically belong to the cluster.
obvious with increasing magnification.
The few hundred blue-white suns
of the eastern cluster, NGC 884, are
all magnitude 8.0 and dimmer, except
for a 6.5-magnitude spark north of the
core. In the core itself, I noticed two
triangular clumps in total spanning 2.3′
that emerged clearly at about 100× in
both scopes. Curiously, the area outside

Sky & Telescope - November 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - November 2023

Contents
Sky & Telescope - November 2023 - Cover1
Sky & Telescope - November 2023 - Cover2
Sky & Telescope - November 2023 - 1
Sky & Telescope - November 2023 - Contents
Sky & Telescope - November 2023 - 3
Sky & Telescope - November 2023 - 4
Sky & Telescope - November 2023 - 5
Sky & Telescope - November 2023 - 6
Sky & Telescope - November 2023 - 7
Sky & Telescope - November 2023 - 8
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Sky & Telescope - November 2023 - Cover3
Sky & Telescope - November 2023 - Cover4
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