On Apr 18, 2005, at 4:14 PM, Jamie Dillon wrote:
> S'long as we're still drooling over southern skies, IC 2602, if I have
> the number right, the Southern Pleiades. Nekked eye, near the Eta
> Carinae nebula. Dynamite in binocs, lots of hot blue stars.
Well, IC 2602 is a nice one in binoculars (or a finder) and a few stars
are visible naked-eye but it's not a telescopic showpiece, at least
from my observation in Costa Rica –
13.1" (2/18/04 - Costa Rica): with the naked-eye an obvious halo is
visible around mag 2.7 Theta Carinae and a couple of stars are visible.
In the 9x50 finder, a couple of dozen stars are resolved in a one
degree region. The "Southern Pleiades" is really too large and too
scattered for an impressive view in the 13". Includes about a dozen
mag 6-7.5 stars scattered in the field and a couple of mag 5 stars
along with blue colored Theta (B-V = -0.2).
BTW, Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille generally gets credit for discovering
this cluster in 1751-1752 during his expedition to the Cape of Good
Hope (using a 1/2-inch lens at 8x!), though I'm not sure if the credit
is due on a naked-eye cluster.
Steve
Received on Mon Apr 18 17:33:48 2005