Steve’s Virtual Planet

Autumn targets sans planets

These last couple of months have seen the gradual westward track of Saturn. It’s way too early in the year for observing Jupiter. Uranus and Neptune are up later but they aren’t easy to get in a small scope. The evenings are getting dark a little sooner now, so, why not work on finding other nice objects to look at.

Well, check the Messier catalog first. A few choices there. Maybe a planetary nebula or two. Check. Galaxies? Yep. How ’bout stars with color. Yep. Several of those to enjoy. Of course, there’s always the standby - double stars! You never run out of them. The links below will take you to Wikipedia for more details. So, here goes.

First, the Messier objects - M57, the Ring Nebula still one of the best planetary nebula; M11, The Wild Duck (open) Cluster in Aquila, a good wide angle object for binoculars or low power scopes; M45, The Pleiades, another great open cluster, is up later in the evening. For galaxies, there is of course M31, The Andromeda Galaxy. And if you look lots of stars in one view, you can’t go wrong with two of the best globular clusters - M13 in Hercules and M15 in Pegasus.

Two other planetary nebula are in the NGC Catalog and high overhead - The Blinking Planetary (NGC6826) in Cygnus and The Blue Snowball (NGC7662) in Andromeda. Both are slightly brighter than M57, but they benefit from averted vision. So look off to the side slightly in your field of view to get a better view.

For colorful objects, you’ll be seeing red! There’s Herschel’s Garnet Star in Cepheus, a very nice red super giant star; there’s also Antares in Scorpius, and also Arcturus in Bootes, both a very noticeable orange.

Finally, for doubles, there’s Albireo, in Cygnus and Kappa Her in Hercules. Enjoy!!!