Andrew Cooper
Apr 3, 2011    Hale Pohaku, HI (map)
46cm f/4.5 Newtonian, Deep Violet @ 175x
Seeing: 8 Transparency: 7 Moon: 0%

Large, bright, a coarse open cluster in a rich starfield, stars arranged in clumps with distinct voids between, about 15' across

Harold Corwin

Solon I. Bailey published a list of 263 bright nebulae and clusters in Volume 60 (No. 8), 1908, of the Harvard Annals, describing them as he saw them on the Harvard patrol camera plates. This was the first all-sky catalogue of deep sky objects assembled from a fairly uniform set of photographic plates.

Among the objects were 13 clusters not in the NGC or the first IC. Dreyer gave 11 of them entries in the second IC, and several have gone on to become quite well-known (e.g. IC 2602, IC 4665). The two that Dreyer did not include are the Pleiades and the Hyades, regarded by him as too well-known to need NGC or IC numbers.

This particular cluster has fainter stars than most of Bailey's other discoveries, so has not become as popular among observers. It is nevertheless a fairly large cluster of 50-75 stars ranging from magnitude 10 or 11 on down. These are scattered over an area of about 9 arcmin by 9 arcmin (Bailey made it 15 arcmin across). I would expect it to show up fairly well in 20-cm and larger telescopes.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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

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