ho hasn’t looked uponthe Great Orion Nebula,Omega Centauri, or thePleiades with wonder? Who

hasn’t gasped at needle-thin NGC 4565through a large telescope or the BeehiveCluster in a pair of 7 · 50 binoculars?We all have our deep-sky favorites. Toooften observing lists tout the biggest andthe best; it’s human nature. Some of myselections will certainly cause more thanone head to nod in agreement, but oth-ers will probably raise a few eyebrows orelicit a why-in-the-world-did-he-ever-pick-that-object response. And that’s whatI’ll try to answer — why these objectshave special significance to me.

A Tale of Two GalaxiesSome might not consider the Milky Waya real deep-sky object, but they would bewrong. It has everything we seek in adeep sky object, but like most nationaltreasures, it can go unnoticed because itis “close to home.” In October 1963 thelate Sky & Telescope editor Joseph Ash-brook wrote about the visual Milky Wayin the Astronomical Scrapbook depart-ment. “During the last years of the 19thcentury,” he said, “study of the naked-eye

Milky Way flourished briefly as an im-portant branch of astronomy. But todaythis work is another example of a facet ofour science that became nearly forgottenbecause technical progress led else-where.” The article included drawings bythe “greatest of all naked-eye observers ofthe galaxy,” Antonie Pannekoek. To thisday I know of no better renderings thanhis. I still look back on this article andsee more than ever Ashbrook’s passionfor the beauty of the night sky.

My Favorite Deep-Sky WondersOf all the sky’s star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies, which would you choose as your favorites? One well-known

observer unveils his list of must-see treasures. By Stephen James O’Meara

observer’s log

Sky & Telescope August 2000 105

One of the sky’s most spectacular regions is this stretch of southern Milky Way in Crux. It includes numerous clusters, nebulae, and thick starclouds. Australian amateur Luke Doddstacked two 20-minute exposures taken with hypered Fuji 400 film and a 105-millimeter f/4lens for this photograph.

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What part of the Milky Way do I findmost alluring? It is a swath of swirlingmadness between the False Cross and theSouthern Cross — between 10h and 14h

of right ascension and –55�to –65�decli-nation. It contains about two dozen openstar clusters, about a dozen nebulae, thickstarclouds, and eerie lagoons of darkness.No other part of the visible heavensdraws more attention to itself than this.

One of my favorite stops in a tour ofthe summer Milky Way is the Pipe Neb-ula — a 12�-long stretch of darkness thatstarts just east of Antares, heads east,dips south by about 7� then turns backwest another 5�. It’s a large complex ofdark nebulae discovered by E. E. Barnardand it looks like a black pipe to thenaked eye. But it’s more than that. At the1991 Texas Star Party veteran observer

Barbara Wilson was using her 20-inchreflector to sail this dark river as if shewere on a raft. The challenge, she said,was to stay on the main path and notwander down one of the many tribu-taries and bang into celestial shores. Itried it myself, and the experience mademe feel like Huck Finn sailing a river in afog: “I had to claw away at the bank pret-ty lively, four or five times, to keep fromknocking the islands out of the river; andso I judged the raft must be butting intothe bank every now and then. . . . Well, Iseemed to be in the open river again . . .”and so on. But Barbara sat by my sideand helped me navigate the river as shehad herself so many times before. I man-aged to lay the raft to rest at the finalshore, and I thanked her.

A galaxy that better fits the popularconception of a deep-sky object is NGC404, a bright lenticular galaxy a mere 8million light-years distant. The galaxy isjust visible in a 2.4-inch refractor, and ittakes power remarkably well. But howmany of us have even seen it? The prob-lem is that the galaxy lies only 6¢north-west of 2nd-magnitude Beta (b) Androm-edae, whose light threatens to overwhelmthis bright little gem. The galaxy is bestviewed with powers high enough toplace Beta out of the field of view. Whatattracts me most about this galaxy is itselusive nature. Finding it was like discov-ering a diamond under a stone. I simplychanced upon it one evening during acomet hunt and was amazed that I hadnever seen it before. In a telescope I’drather show this galaxy to visitors than

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This Luke Dodd photograph shows one of the Milky Way’s most prominent dark features, thePipe Nebula. Because this object spans 12�on its longest axis, most telescopes show only asmall piece at a time. The “bowl” of the pipe (Barnard 78, left of center) is among the most dis-tinct dark nebulae in the sky.

Even if it is seldom thought of as such, the sky’s largest deep-sky object is the edge-on galaxy known as the Milky Way. The Dutch astronomer

Antonie Pannekoek took on the monumental task of sketching its full extent and published his first study in 1920. Although photography is

able to record the galaxy’s appearance with great accuracy, the visual impact of actually seeing the Milky Way is effectively conveyed in

Pannekoek’s sketches. The Southern Cross region appears at left and the Sagittarius and Scorpius regions are depicted at right.

M31, the Great Spiral in Andromeda. See-ing its pure milky white light fighting offthe topaz fire of Beta Andromedae bringsto mind these words from Robert Frost’spoem “Revelation”:

But so with all, from babes that playAt hide-and-seek to God afar,So all who hide too well awayMust speak and tell us where they are.

Reflections and SurprisesNGC 1333 in Perseus is a simple butbeautiful reflection nebula. I’ve swept itup many times during my comet hunts(even in moonlight) with my 4-inch re-fractor, and each time I encounter theglow I believe I’ve made a discovery. Onmost star charts, the object is far fromeye-catching. In Sky Atlas 2000.0, for in-stance, its symbol is a tiny box — itlooks like an afterthought or perhaps amove to flesh out that region of sky withpretty symbols. Far from unremarkable,though, NGC 1333 is much more obvi-ous than the often-observed Meropenebula in the Pleiades cluster. Indeed, thenebula is quite bright, shining at magni-tude 3.6, but it is also very tiny, measur-ing a mere 6¢· 3¢in diameter.

At first glance, NGC 1333 appearsround with a uniform luster, but closerinspection reveals it to be a mottled kid-ney bean of light oriented north-north-east and south-southwest. There really isnothing dynamic about NGC 1333. Infact, it is the very simplicity of it that at-tracts me. It reminds me of an orangeflower I saw once in the Everglades; oneday, as I was staring out into that vastriver of grass, my eyes locked on to asolitary orange flower no larger than adime in the distance. Once my eyescaught sight of it, the rest of the Ever-glades disappeared.

NGC 1360 is an often-overlooked jewelin Fornax. It has immediate “wow” ap-peal, especially when one stumbles uponit, as I did one evening. Anything thatstops me in my visual sweeps and makesme wonder, “What the heck is that?”leaves a lasting impression. I like surpris-es. And this planetary certainly surprisedme. Not only is NGC 1360 bright (mag-nitude 9.4) — it is huge! While manyplanetaries measure several arcsecondsacross, NGC 1360 spans a respectable61/2¢of sky, about five times the size ofM57, the Ring Nebula. Its central staralso burns at 11th magnitude, making ita cinch to find in even the smallest of

backyard instruments. Not much isheard about the visual appearance of itfrom amateurs who live at midnorthernlatitudes, which is surprising. Perhapsthis is because NGC 1360 is located inFornax and thought of as a “southern”object, even though it is at nearly thesame declination as Antares and theglobular cluster M4.

I thank my wife, Donna, for introduc-ing me to NGC 1647, a wonderful butsomewhat neglected open cluster nearthe V-shaped face of Taurus, the Bull.One night Donna stood in the drivewayof our home in Volcano, Hawaii, andpointed her 7 · 35 binoculars toward theHyades. Suddenly she exclaimed that shehad discovered a comet and pointed afinger about 31/2� to the northeast of Al-debaran. To my surprise, I saw a beauti-ful open cluster that had, for all theseyears, escaped my gaze. Through herbinoculars NGC 1647 was a lovely clus-ter, appearing as a round, ghostly glowwith an apparent size larger than that ofthe full Moon; undoubtedly, since I hadlived most of my life in the Boston area,light pollution must have drowned outthe cluster’s pale glow, making it easy tomiss. Yet, the 6.4-magnitude cluster canbe seen with the naked eye from a dark-sky site. Most of its 200 stars are foundwithin 1⁄2� of the cluster’s core, where afine pair of 9th-magnitude stars domi-nates the view. Other bright stars spiralout from the core with crooked or dis-jointed arms. NGC 1647 is not denselypacked, however, and the view is best atlow powers. Actually, the best view of it

Sky & Telescope August 2000 107

Taurus is a happy hunting ground for binocu-lar observers. While most have explored thePleiades and Hyades, few are familiar withthe pretty cluster NGC 1647 31⁄2�northeast ofthe brilliant red-giant star Aldebaran.

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for me was seeing it that chilly evening,standing next to the woman I love, whowas looking at the stars that I love. Whodiscovered NGC 1647? To me it will al-ways be Donna.

The Soul of M42If I had to select one object that wouldsymbolize the soul of the night to me, I’dhave to say the Orion Nebula, and prob-ably not for the reason you might expect.The Orion Nebula symbolizes purity tome — purity of human heart. Here’swhy. When Harvard Observatory direc-tor William Cranch Bond and his sonGeorge turned the newly installed 15-inch refractor to it in 1847, they saw itsprinkled with stars. “It is delightful,”William wrote, “to see the stars broughtout which have been hid in mysteriouslight from the human eye, since the cre-ation.” William seemed particularly takenwith this nebula and continued to watch it

until his death. After his father passed awayand George became the observatory di-rector, he picked up his father’s torch andbegan to study the nebula in great detail.He began drawing the nebula and map-ping its stars in 1859. Five years later, hestill had not completed the work, and onhis deathbed he wrote, “My disease makesprogress, and leaves me little hope of put-ting the materials of my work on Orion —to which I had devoted so much labor. . . .In truth, I am becoming resigned to theidea that most of it is destined to obliv-ion. I had planned to accomplish some-thing considerable, and this is the end.”He is said to have died with pen in hand.

An engraving of his work was pub-lished in the Annals of Harvard CollegeObservatory and it stands alone as themost accurate rendition ever created by avisual observer. Bond’s work inspired mein 1971 (when I was only 14 years old) tobecome a patient and persistent observer.

That year, when I first began using the15-inch and 9-inch telescopes at Har-vard, I turned the telescope to the nebulaand tried to see it through Bond’s eyes. Iwanted to keep his legacy alive, to showthat he did not die in a vacuum. Today,whenever I see the Orion Nebula’s “over-powering sublimity,” I see not HubbleSpace Telescope cloudscapes and proto-planetary wonders but the soul ofGeorge Bond mirrored in M42’s nebu-lous folds.

The Unknown and the ExoticCederblad 62 is another Orion favorite,but I will bet you’ve never heard of it. It’sa bright, hourglass-shaped, bipolar re-flection nebula that perhaps only ahandful of observers have seen. I certain-ly would not have been one of them hadSky & Telescope’s Dennis di Cicco notcalled me up on October 16, 1998, andasked me to look for it. While investigat-ing historic observations of nebulae, diCicco found a 1922 Astrophysical Journalpaper by Edwin Hubble titled A GeneralStudy of Diffuse Galactic Nebulae. In itHubble describes “a bright uncataloguednebula similar to NGC 2245. A thir-teenth-magnitude star is at the apex ofthe cometary form. It is surprising tofind that so bright an object has beenoverlooked by observers.”

After Dennis called me, I went outsideand, sure enough, at 23· in my 4-inchGenesis refractor, I found Ced 62 sur-prisingly obvious, like a normal star of

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Left: M42 in Orion is one of the sky’s undisputed showpieces and is shown in striking detail in this CCD image by Connecticut astro imager

Robert Gendler. He used a Takahashi FSQ 106 f/5 refractor and an SBIG ST8E camera to record this image. Right: This engraving of the Orion

Nebula is among the most realistic visual impressions of this famous object. It is the result of George P. Bond’s observations from 1857 to

1864 with the 15-inch refractor at Havard Observatory. According to Bond’s assistant, Asaph Hall (who later discovered the satellites of Mars),

“Professor Bond had one of the keenest eyes I have ever met with.”

O’Meara’s FavoritesObject Constellation Type R.A. (2000.0) Dec. Mag. (V) Chart number

Sky Atlas Millennium 2000.0 Star Atlas

NGC 404 Andromeda Gal 1h 09.4m +35�43¢ 11.0 4 125

NGC 1333 Perseus RN 3h 29.2m +31�22¢ 9.5 4 141

NGC 1360 Fornax PN 3h 33.3m –25�51¢ 9.4 18 356

NGC 1647 Taurus OC 4h 45.9m +19�06¢ 6.4 5 184

M42 Orion E/RN 5h 35.4m –5�27¢ 2.9 11 278

Ced 62 (NGC 2163) Orion EN 6h 07.8m +18�39¢ ? 11* 180*

Q0957+561 Ursa Major QSR 10h 01.3m +55�54¢ 17.0 2 578

NGC 5102 Centaurus Gal 13h 22.0m –36�38¢ 9.7 21 912

* Object’s position incorrectly plotted.

12th magnitude. At 74·, diffuse nebulosityextended to the north and a hint of fuzzi-ness appeared around the “star.” At 130·,the object’s tiny 2¢-long hourglass shapebecame clear. So I put a 7-millimeter Na-gler eyepiece into a 3· Barlow and sur-veyed the object with 390·. And it stilllooked spectacular! I could clearly separatethe brighter northern half from the fuzzystar, while the southern portion of thenebula cascaded from the star like a fan-shaped comet tail. What impressed memost, however, was that later I saw it in a60-mm Tasco refractor. I love this mysteri-ous object. It’s become a favorite of minebecause to me it represents the “vast un-known” — objects we fail to discover be-cause we fail to explore. “How manybright nebulae are going unnoticed,” diCicco asked, “because we stop lookingafter the Messier and NGC objects?”

The Double Quasar in Ursa Major(Q0957 + 561) is one of the most eso-teric objects in the universe. This pair of17th-magnitude quasars 6†apart are op-tical illusions — two images of the samequasar whose light is being gravitational-ly lensed by an 18th-magnitude fore-ground galaxy and surrounding galaxycluster. No one believed such a mirage —a concept first introduced by Albert Ein-stein in the general theory of relativity— could be visible in amateur-size tele-scopes. But in the fall of 1990, RudolphSchild of the Harvard Smithsonian Cen-ter for Astrophysics thought differently,and he met with Sky & Telescope editor

Sky & Telescope August 2000 109

The seldom-observed bipolar nebula Ceder-blad 62 is well shown in this 15¢-wide Digi-tized Sky Survey image. Located in Orion,part of this object’s obscurity is no doubt dueto the fact that it is misplotted in many pop-ular star atlases. The position given in thetable on page 108 is correct. North is up.

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in chief Leif J. Robinson and me to dis-cuss the possibility of recruiting amateurobservations of it. The impossible hap-pened at the 1991 Winter Star Partywhen Arizona amateur Tim Hunter and Imade sightings of it through a 20-inchreflector. (Later we learned that BobBunge and Brent Archinal in Ohio hadindependently seen it at Warren RuppObservatory before us.) By the spring of1991, lines were forming behind the bigDobsonians at the Texas Star Party to seethe Double Quasar. Why do I hold thisobject so close to my heart? Because aprofessional astronomer believed in theabilities of amateur astronomers and hadthe kindness to share this opportunitywith us and to help us expand our visualhorizons.

NGC 5102 in Centaurus is the south-ern equivalent of NGC 404, so all thesentiments are the same. This lenticulargalaxy hides in the bright “skirt” of 3rd-magnitude Iota (i) Centauri. NGC 5102is more obvious than NGC 404, becauseit is both brighter and farther from itsneighboring star. It can be seen from allof the continental United States; it is

110 August 2000 Sky & Telescope

An observer of legendary skill, Stephen JamesO’Meara is seen here with the equatorial 15-inch Merz refractor at Harvard Observatory.O’Meara’s contribution is the first in a seriesof articles in which experienced and well-known enthusiasts describe their personalfavorite deep-sky wonders.

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higher than the lowest parts of the Tail ofScorpius. Interestingly, it is not men-tioned in most handbooks, yet the gal-axy’s size, magnitude, and surface bright-ness are comparable to those of M32, theelliptical companion to the AndromedaGalaxy. I first noticed the galaxy during acomet sweep across Centaurus with theGenesis at 23·, the galaxy being a nag-ging glow just beyond the glare of Iota. Iwas ready to dismiss it as a ghost imageof that star, but the star and object main-tained their relationship no matter how Imoved the telescope.

I believe we like to see companions inspace. That’s why pairings like the Dou-ble Cluster and M81 and M82 are sopopular. As humans, we enjoy interac-tion — we enjoy interacting with theheavens and we like to see the objects weadmire “interacting” with each other. Itmakes the vastness of space feel a littleless lonely.

In 1961, when I was five, I watched theMoon disappear. Actually it didn’t disap-pear; it just turned a deep blood red.And as it did, I saw the stars graduallyemerge along with the glowing length ofthe Milky Way. To me that first sightingwas a revelation. My young eyes saw itnot as a haze but as a true river of stars. Ilived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, andback then the city lights weren’t all thatbad. The sky still had its majesty. Overtime, though, the city grew, and theMilky Way just disappeared into the cityglow. I got to see the Milky Way everynow and again when I traveled, but itwasn’t until I moved to Hawaii that I re-discovered it. And I’m not the only one.One night when I was observing fromthe summit of Kilauea volcano, a carpulled up and an elderly man got out tostretch. When he saw the southern MilkyWay blazing over the throat of the vol-cano, he called and called to his wife thatshe had to get out of the car for a look.Moments later the man wrapped hisarms around his wife and they looked upinto the sky. “I haven’t seen the sky thisbeautiful since I was a kid,” he said, thenhe kissed her. In that one moment, I un-derstood the romance of the stars. It hasnever left me.

In addition to being a hopeless romantic,Stephen James O’Meara is a contributingeditor to this magazine and a noted observerand author. His most recent book, Deep-SkyCompanions: The Messier Objects, is avail-able through Sky Publishing.

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