Andrew Cooper
Jan 31, 2011    Hale Pohaku, HI (map)
46cm f/4.5 Newtonian, Deep Violet @ 60x
Seeing: 6 Transparency: 6.5 Moon: 0%

A large, bright, coarse assemblage of stars across a 1° area, not a good telescopic object, need binos or RFT to appreciate

Andrew Cooper
Mar 13, 2010    Hale Pohaku, HI (map)
15cm f/5 Newtonian, Primero @ 22x
Seeing: 7 Transparency: 6.5 Moon: 0%

A coarse cluster over a degree across, quite bright, a few dozen stars arranged in several clumps, a nice object for the 6" RFT, not as impressive as the Pleiades despite the moniker, obvious to the unaided eye

Andrew Cooper
Apr 5, 2007    Hale Pohaku, HI (map)
15cm f/5 Newtonian, Primero @ 35x
Seeing: 7 Transparency: 7 Moon: 0%

Large! Bright! conspicuous to the unaided eye, a large open cluster dominated by a dozen or so bright blue stars over a 1° area, the similarity to M45 The Pleiades is obvious, resulting in the moniker Southern Pleiades

Harold Corwin

IC 2602 = Lacaille II-9. This is one of 13 clusters not in the NGC or 1st IC listed by Bailey in his 1908 all-sky catalogue of bright and large nebulae and clusters. This particular cluster is very large -- about a degree across -- with several naked-eye stars, including theta Carinae. Theta itself is just southwest of the apparent center of the cluster. This is one of the nearest Galactic open clusters at about 155 parsecs. Whiteoak (MNRAS 123, 245, 1961) has the photometry of bright cluster members down to about magnitude 8.5, while Randich et al (A&A 323, 86, 1997 and A&A 372, 862, 2001) have photometry and spectroscopy of fainter cluster member candidates as well as references to earlier studies.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

Drawings, descriptions, and CCD photos are copyright Andrew Cooper unless otherwise noted, no usage without permission.

A complete list of credits and sources can be found on the about page