2.0 KiB
| name | created_by | created_date | updated_by | updated_date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perseus | skybber | 2021-07-11 10:25:29.069328 | skybber | 2022-02-11 18:37:46.059747 |
A prominent, in our partly circumpolar constellation of the northern sky, with four stars brighter than 3mag. It lies in the Milky Way between Charioteer and Andromeda, to the left below the Kasiopei pattern. The rich star field forms one of the spiral arms of our Galaxy, the Perseus Arm. Perseus is rich in objects typical of the Milky Way constellation, such as open star clusters and emission nebulae. But it also contains some interesting galaxies. Messier objects are represented in the open cluster M34 and the planetary nebula M76. The h / χ Perseus binary cluster - NGC 869 & NGC 884 and the binocular-suitable Alpha Perseus mobile group, one of the closest open clusters to our Solar System, also catch our attention. The California Gas Nebula is also well known, although spotting it visually is not so easy for beginners.
The Milky Way enters the constellation as a narrow path through the stars φ, 4 and 9 Perseus. However, if you go to some of the dimmer locations where even very faint stars are visible, you'll see much more detail. To the north of the Stock 2 cluster, a narrow dark bay cuts into the Milky Way, extending all the way to the star ε Cas, which transitions into a larger circular dimming towards the east. This forms a relatively sharp nebulous outlier of the Milky Way, disappearing somewhere near a pair of unnamed fourth-magnitude stars at the boundary of Giraffe, Cassiopeia and Perseus. The main stream continues between the open cluster M34 and the open cluster Melotte 20 at α Perseus, which contains several white sparkly stars. In the triad, the cluster breaks up into a belt of several dozen stars of varying brightness that almost covers the entire field of view. The brightest of these are ε, ψ, 29, 30, 31 and 34 Perseus. A very faint edge of the oval-shaped Milky Way is still between the ζ and ε stars of Perseus and is bounded by dark nebulae.