Just over the Cephean border from M52 and the Bubble nebula in Cassiopeia lurks IC1470. Down on my charts as being 15 arc minutes wide, it is just a little pink square with one bright half containing a star. There is some structure within it, that’s hard to see with the fuzziness of the optics. There are as you may notice some bluish patches of what looks like ‘reflection nebulae’, where starlight is scattered off interstellar dust. A couple of smudges appear at centre left and a curly patch next to the bright blue star on the right. I guess this nebulous richness is because we are looking much further across our galaxy into the outer (Perseus) spiral arm where things therefore look smaller and closer together. I still find it amazing when stars line up into pretty patterns, like the beautiful curly ‘X’ at centre left just under the faint blue nebulae. Also there is a curly arrow shape just above centre. I wonder if this is just chance alignment, or are they associated?
Monday 31 January 2011
IC 1470
Just over the Cephean border from M52 and the Bubble nebula in Cassiopeia lurks IC1470. Down on my charts as being 15 arc minutes wide, it is just a little pink square with one bright half containing a star. There is some structure within it, that’s hard to see with the fuzziness of the optics. There are as you may notice some bluish patches of what looks like ‘reflection nebulae’, where starlight is scattered off interstellar dust. A couple of smudges appear at centre left and a curly patch next to the bright blue star on the right. I guess this nebulous richness is because we are looking much further across our galaxy into the outer (Perseus) spiral arm where things therefore look smaller and closer together. I still find it amazing when stars line up into pretty patterns, like the beautiful curly ‘X’ at centre left just under the faint blue nebulae. Also there is a curly arrow shape just above centre. I wonder if this is just chance alignment, or are they associated?
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