An Elusive Nebula in the Northern Sky

November 9, 2009

Last week, we toured a few lovely star clusters in Cassiopeia. Truth is, there’s so much to see in this part of the sky, we just have to share two more sights in this part of the sky…

But first, we admit a mistake in the last article, alas. The star beta Cassiopeii is called Caph, while alpha Cass is called Shedir. We got them backwards in our last article (thanks to our dedicated subscriber F.P. for pointing this out).

Onwards…

If you have reasonably dark skies, and even a 3-4 inch scope, try to spot the emission nebula NGC 281 (shown just near alpha Cass in this map. An OIII or UHC filter is a big help, especially if you’re up against some light pollution.


NGC 281 was discovered by the self-made astronomer E. E. Barnard, though he missed the embedded and inconspicuous star cluster IC 1590. The brightest star in this cluster, called Barnard 1, is a multiple star with three blue-white components visible in most telescopes. This star and its stellar brethren light up the gas and dust you see in your telescope.

Visually, NGC 281 looks ghostly white. It’s just not bright enough to trigger the color receptors in your retina. But long-exposure photographs bring out the pinkish-red color nicely. Here’s an image of NGC 281 taken with specialized optical filters. While taking an image this detailed is quite difficult, a little practice and the right know-how will help you grab your own images of NGC 281, and similar sights in the sky.

In the next article, we’ll tell you about a critically important star in the next-door constellation Cepheus, and how it helped astronomers to measure the universe…

But that’s it for today…

Posted in Celestial Objects