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Home , Mensa (constellation)

Appendix: Mensa, the

Mensa map (Magda Streicher)

The great astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille formed the figure Mensa from situated close to the , and just south of the polar constellation . The constellation is honoured by Lacaille as Table Mountain at the Cape of Good Hope. The open clusters in Mensa can be described only as faint hazy dots, seeing that it is part of our distant and relatively far away to gasp through ordinary telescopes. However, NGC 2122 displays a small roundish drop of moist with fading edges. With careful observation the south-western part seems slightly more defined with a peppery impression. The cluster is situated on the southern edge of the LMC, a field of view that is filled with faint stars and nebulosity. The emission NGC 2103, 1.5 degrees further south from NGC 2122, reveals a barely seen misty piece of nebulosity slightly oval in shape. Higher magnification brings to the fore a few faint stars embedded in the hazy, uneven surface.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license 249 to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Froehlich (ed.), Space Fostering African Societies, Southern Space Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59158-8 250 Appendix: Mensa, the Table Mountain Star Constellation

STREICHER 29 is a rather faint group of stars. Most of the stars are of a similar magnitude in the midst of a busy star field. A slightly brighter NGC 1520 displays a few stars of approximately magnitude 9 in brightness that appear close together as a group. A triangle of stars occupies the centre with some fainter members stringing towards the north. Although it clearly stands out against the hazy field of view the area is scattered in faint starlight. Courtesy of Magda Streicher, Astronomical Society of Southern Africa (ASSA)

Object Type RA DEC MAG Size NGC 1520 Open 03 h −76°50′.2 9 5′ cluster 57 m.5 STREICHER 29 DSH Asterism 05 h −75°07′.0 8 14′ J0517.5-7507 17 m.5 NGC 2103 Nebula 05 h −71°20′.1 11 3′ 41 m.7 NGC 2122 Open 05 h −70°04′.2 10 4′ cluster 48 m.8