Top 5 Most Recent Articles
  1. Winds on Venus: Getting Stronger
  2. Cat’s Paw Nebula: Nearby Mini-Starburst?
  3. This Week's Sky at a Glance
  4. Universe's Lithium Problem A Bit Better
  5. My Hour in the Stratosphere
Top 5 Most Popular Articles
  1. June 17 - 23, 2013
  2. Universe's Lithium Problem A Bit Better
  3. Choosing Your First Telescope
  4. My Hour in the Stratosphere
  5. Comet ISON Approaches
Top 5 Most Emailed Articles
  1. Comet ISON Approaches
  2. The Milky Way's New Arm
  3. This Week's Sky at a Glance
  4. How to Toast a Planet
  5. Time and the Amateur Astronomer


home > observing > celestial objects > deep sky
email this > print this > save this > rss >

Open Clusters by the Season

Open clusters are pretty sights in any-sized telescope.

by Walter Scott Houston

Open cluster M7
Through a small telescope, the open star cluster M7 in Scorpius reveals dozens of jewel-like pinpoints of light.
Courtesy Akira Fujii.
From 1946 to 1994, Sky & Telescope magazine featured a column called Deep-Sky Wonders, written by amateur astronomer Walter Scott Houston. In it he explored the dim denizens of the deep sky — asterisms, double and variable stars, open and globular clusters, nebulae, and galaxies.

Deep-Sky Wonders, a month-by-month selection of those columns, was published in 1999 and is available from Sky Publishing. The following seasonal guide to a variety of open clusters consists of excerpts from the book.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next Page >


Sky Publishing, a New Track Media Company
Copyright © 2013 New Track Media. All rights reserved.
Sky & Telescope, Night Sky, and SkyandTelescope.com are registered trademarks of New Track Media