No camera and no notebook tonight, just a pleasant evening browsing round the double stars and star clusters of Cassiopeia using my Monthly Sky Guide. Found the double star Eta Cassiopeiae after a while looking in the wrong place. A nice double star with one of the pair much fainter than the other. These two orbit each other every 480 years.
Spent some time trying to find the open cluster M52. Reverted to binoculars – brilliant for getting a general sense of the sky and locating brighter objects. These picked out M52 easily as a blur, after which it was easy to locate in the telescope. A triangular cluster with a lovely milky appearance between the stars. Perhaps a good candidate to come back to with the camera. A new addition to my Messier logbook.
On to open cluster M103. Also located first with binoculars – another triangular cluster, although no milky appearance and a strong spine of stars. A double star is seen at one end.
I also found nearby star clusters NGC 663 and NGC 654 and NGC 457 – Cassiopeia is awash with star clusters!
Thought I could see Jupiter rising over my rooftop, although it turned out to be Capella in the Auriga constellation – one of the brightest stars of the winter at magnitude 0.08 and the 6th brightest star in the sky overall.