Andrew Cooper
Sep 30, 2005    Gila, New Mexico (map)
90mm F/12 APO Violet Haze

The pair is beautiful, two rich concentrations of stars in a rich galactic star field, visible to the unaided eye, very nice in 9x63 binoculars, absolutely beautiful in the 90mm scope, NGC884 is larger, sparser, a bright clump with a dim haze interwoven, NGC869 is brighter with a couple bright blues dominating, a little color in the stars but nothing I would call 'ruby' or 'garnet' after Smyth, a nice orange in the space between the clusters

Andrew Cooper
Sep 28, 2002    Kitt Peak, AZ (map)
25cm f/10 SCT

Gorgeous as always, both clusters in the field, Large! Bright! rich and concentrated, visible with the unaided eye, several hundred visible members, larger and somewhat less dense than NGC869

Rev. T.W. Webb
May 19, 1885    Hardwick, Herefordshire, England (map)
94mm f/18 Tully Achromat

These two gorgeous clusters, described by Sm. as 'affording together one of the most brilliant telescopic objects in the heavens,' are visible to the naked eye as a protuberant parts of the Galaxy, and so H. considers them. They are often called The Sword Hand of Perseus. With 64 these superb masses are visible together, as well as a bright part north. 5-1/2in. showed a red star between them. Smyth mentions a ruby and a garnet in NGC884. 9-1/3in. shows 5 stars in all. T.T. Smith sees 8. Es. sees 9 in the cluster and outliers, all very similar in color, and spectrum (faint III type). The red stars are all associated with NGC884. Adams finds that all the brighter stars in the cluster have nearly the same radial velocity. Follow the curve of stars north , which leads to the glorious region at 2h 6m, N. 58° 55' [Stock 2].

― Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes, T. W. Webb, 1917

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

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