20 August 2015, Nikon 8×40 Small Bonicular Discoveries

Telescope: 8x40 (Nikon 8×40) Time: 2015/08/20 20:00-21:10UT Location: Karvin´a Weather: Good transparency, only slight haze.

We went for couple of days to visit my best sights in 8×40 binocular I know about. parents. I did not take a telescope with me, I also checked the LeDrew 1, packing three kids was already quite tire- I run on this cluster two years ago in Tele- some. I took with me at least my Nikon mentor (details can be found here). It was 8 × 40 binoculars. barely perceptible in the 8 × 40 binocular. I was not expecting much. Although my Then an unexpected surprise came. I run parent’s garden is more dark than our back- on several suspicious milky groups in yard, my experience from past was that the the area north of λ Andromedae. I was visibility of faint targets was significantly aware of only one open cluster in there, worse from there. It has probably some- NGC 7686. As I remembered, it was not thing to do with the air pollution. My par- exactly a spectacular one in 100mm refrac- ents live in the heavy industrial area with tor. black coal mines and connected steel indus- I went home to consult my findings with try. When I was a kid, I could not see Pocket Sky Atlas in my laptop. Neither of even bright targets like M71 in my home the four noticed groups was NGC 7686. And made Newton 160/1000. On one occasion, indeed, NGC 7686 was the only plotted clus- I had this telescope on summer vacation in ter in the area. I went out again. NGC 7686 the mountains and this easy globular cluster was not visible in the binocular even when was visible already in the telescope’s finder I know about its precise location. I quickly 20 × 50. The quality of air improved a lot sketched the location of my findings with re- since those times, still it is not perfect. spect to (λ And, 18 And, Z And, and Nevertheless, it was quite pleasant hour NGC 7789) for later identification. spent outside with binoculars. I’m not using Interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas is a great them too often, mostly on special occasions tool for such job. It contains many open like this. Therefore I decided to scan the clusters and asterisms, much more than sky for some brighter objects just using my Uranometria 2000.0. Back from vacation, memory as I had no atlas with me neither. I confronted my notes with this atlas. To I spent the first half of the session near the my surprise, three out of four objects were southern horizon. I could identify the fol- actually known. lowing targets: M11, M25, M24, M23, M18, The most suspicious star group was open M17, M22, NGC 6633, IC 4756, IC 4665. cluster Aveni-Hunter 1 (200) located east Some of them were quite beautiful - in par- of Z And. There are not many reports ticular the pair of open clusters NGC 6633 on internet about observation of this clus- and IC 4756. ter. Jaakko Saloranta gives the following Then I switched to Cassiopeia– description through 203mm Newton: 20’ Andromeda–Perseus area. Beside the usual cluster of 50* mags 8-14. NE side is the targets – M31, NGC752, h and χ Per, most obvious with all the bright stars. SW NGC663, NGC 457, M52, NGC 7789 – I was side has a scattering of 20* mags 12-14. Not admiring beautiful α Per cluster. One of the very obvious - lost in the background. Right in the middle between the cluster Here the reports are more numerous. For and λ And, I have noticed another suspi- example Steve Coe reports seeing the clus- cious milky patch. It was less pronounced ter already in his 11 × 80 finder ( here). than Aveni-Hunter 1, still it was standing I could not identify the last, fourth spot. out well enough to be noticed. This group Here my sketch was less precise, I noted only is plotted in the atlas as asterism Teutsch- that it was about half way between 18 And Patchick-Kronberger 1 (230 × 110). Ac- and NGC 7789. Nothing is plotted in this cording to Jaakko Saloranta, the asterism position in the Deep Sky Atlas. However looked through 203mm Newton as: Fairly there were around few potential candidates. nice, scattered asterism of 40 stars mags 9- I need to check this region one more time. 14. Not compressed. Not well detached from And not only this region. I need to take the background, but somewhat obvious due out 8 × 40 binoculars more often. Differ- to the 9th magnitude members. Best visible ent perspective provided by small binoculars at low powers. Size 25’. brings to a live many objects hardly notice- The last identified object was open cluster able in bigger astronomical telescopes. Stock 12 (200). It was another quite well detached milky group just north of 18 And. Alexander Kupˇco