Wednesday, July 10, 2024

The Coathangar (all night)

The Coathangar asterism, also known as Brocchi's Cluster and Collinder 399 is located in Vulpecula, approximately midway between Aquila's brightest star Altair and the bottom two stars of Lyra's parallelogram. In binoculars it resembles its namesake, but upside-down. Look for a half-dozen 6th magnitude stars arranged in a 1.5 degrees-long straight line with a hook-shaped arc of four slightly brighter stars below it. Your telescope will reveal that most of the stars are of a whitish A- and B-class type, but the two most southerly members are orange-red K- and M-class stars. The Coathangar is not a true cluster of related stars, but a trick of happenstance - their distances vary between 230 and 2050 light-years from the sun. Before moving on, swap in a stronger eyepiece and look 17 arc-minutes beyond the eastern tip of the coathangar's bar for NGC 6802. It's a small, dense, N-S elongated open cluster of about 50 stars.

(Data courtesy of Starry Night)
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* Origin: CJ's Place, Orange City FL > cjsplace.thruhere.net (21:2/156)