Sky & Telescope - November 2023 - 6

ASTERISM LINES: BILL DELLINGES; STAR CHART: SKY
ATLAS 2000.0 / ROGER W. SINNOTT AND WILL TIRION
FROM OUR READERS
Hanging by a Hair
I really enjoyed Ken Hewitt-White's " A
Cosmic Coathanger Caper " (S&T: July
2023, p. 54). I always look forward to
his articles, which combine his adroit
observational skills with a dash of
humor. And it was nice to see a comprehensive
piece on this unique asterism.
I wonder if I'm the only stargazer
on the planet who sees another, larger
hanger in the heavens these July
evenings? I refer to Mel 111, the open
star cluster in Coma Berenices above
the hindquarters of Leo, the Lion. As
lovely as it is, for many years, I only saw
a shotgun blast of stars. But recently,
perhaps due to light pollution, which
dims some of its fainter members, I see
a hanger amongst its stars.
There are several differences, however.
This hanger is over three times
as large as Cr 399 (Mel 111 fills my 8°
the internet, and you can see it at:
http://bit.ly/ufoskeptic.
Andrew Fraknoi
Fromm Institute
University of San Francisco
San Francisco, California
binocular field), it runs north to south
rather than east-west, and the hanger
part is not as straight as Cr 399's is.
Perhaps this is an example of pareidolia,
the reason I always see the Lady in the
Moon when I look at a full Moon.
Bill Dellinges
Apache Junction, Arizona
Astronomy for the Ages
Thank you for publishing Emily Lakdawalla's
excellent article " Sights Set
on Uranus " (S&T: July 2023, p. 14).
Late in the article, she makes the point
that the mid- to late-career scientists
who are proposing missions to Uranus
right now will not be the ones who get
to analyze the results from these missions.
Instead, by the time such a mission
has reached Uranus, it will belong
to today's early-career scientists.
That will be even more true of
Keeping an Eye on the Sky
In reference to Scott Harrington's " FarOut
Globular Clusters " (S&T: June 2023,
p. 20), I would like to raise an intriguing
question for amateurs: Which deep-sky
objects look the most beautiful visually?
Amateur astronomers can now easily
take photographs of galaxies with stunning
beauty, and usually these photographs
look better than anyone can
achieve visually even with a very large
telescope. But when comparing views of
globulars like M13 or NGC 5139, I have
noted that their photos lack a lot of the
grand effect as seen through an eyepiece
of a good telescope with decent aperture.
Some tiny, delicate structure of the blue
giants over the background of unresolved
stars is missing in photographs.
This suggests a more general question:
What are the other advantages (if any)
of observing over astrophotography?
Zbigniew Zembaty
Opole, Poland
Quasimoto Moon
Perhaps the latest quasi-moon
(https://is.gd/newquasimoon) should
be named " Quasimoto? "

http://bit.ly/ufoskeptic https://www.is.gd/Break-through_ https://www.is.gd/Break-through_ https://www.is.gd/UAP_Panel https://www.is.gd/TravelTime https://www.is.gd/newquasimoon

Sky & Telescope - November 2023

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