60 JANUARY THE SKY GUIDE

suggesting that there is a large step in brightness

STEPHEN TONKIN’S between the brighter and fainter members of this

BINOCULAR TOUR cluster. With a core diameter of about 10 lightyears,

January brings us a starry braid, an unusual
variable and a band of clusters of varying fame

�  Tick the box when you’ve seen each one
1 THE PLEIADES
10x The spectacular Pleiades, also known as
50 the Seven Sisters, is an easy naked-eye
object, but put it in the field of small binoculars
and it is as if a handful of diamonds had been
tipped onto blue-black velvet. Under suburban
skies, you should see about 40 stars and in dark
skies it is easy to lose count of them. Look for the
many subtle curves and chains of stars, especially
Ally’s Braid, a chain of 7th- and 8th-magnitude
stars extending for nearly 1º south from Alcyone,
the brightest star in the cluster. � SEEN IT
2 THE HYADES
10x The Hyades (also designated Melotte 25)
50 is next to mag. +1.0 Aldebaran (Alpha (_)
Tauri), which is a foreground star. The Hyades will
overflow the field of view of all but wide-angle
binoculars and you should easily see 30 or more
stars. It is only 153 lightyears away. In mythology,
the Hyades were the daughters of Atlas. The tears
they shed for their brother, Hyas, who was slain
by a lion, is the rain that often coincides with
their heliacal setting in springtime. � SEEN IT
3 CD TAURI
10x You can find eclipsing variable CD Tauri
50 by hopping across to mag. +3.0 Zeta (c)
Tauri, then navigating 5° back towards Aldebaran,
where you will find a little trapezium of 6th- and
7th-magnitude stars. The faintest, most westerly
star of the trapezium is our target. It varies in
brightness between +6.8 and +7.3 over a period
of just under three and a half days as one star of
the pair passes in front of the other. It is unusual
in that the eclipse minima are very similar, with
drops of 0.54 and 0.57 magnitudes. � SEEN IT
4 NGC 1662
15x We switch to larger binoculars for our
70 next target, 6.25° from Aldebaran towards
mag. +0.2 Rigel (Beta (`) Orionis). In 15x70s,
open cluster NGC 1662 appears as a winding
string of stars against an elliptical background
glow. Unusually, averted vision does not seem to
affect the number of stars that you can see,
it is approximately the same size as the Hyades,
but is nearly 10 times as far away. � SEEN IT
5 COLLINDER 65
10x Large asterisms are ideal for binoculars,
50 but the 4°-wide Collinder 65 is often
overlooked. Use the arrowhead of bright stars
at the top of Orion – formed by Betelgeuse,
Meissa and Bellatrix (or Alpha (_), Gamma (a)
and Lambda (h) Orionis) – that point to a
naked-eye misty patch 6.5° north-northwest of
Meissa on the edge of the Milky Way. You will
see many chains and groups of stars, with an
equilateral triple near the south and the orange
CE Tauri, a semi-regular variable (mag. +4.2
to +4.5) to the north. � SEEN IT
6 THE MEISSA CLUSTER
10x If you look at Orion’s head through
50 binoculars, you can immediately see why
it looks distinctly fuzzy to the naked eye: it is a
small cluster of stars, also designated Collinder
69. The dozen or so stars that you can resolve
are dominated by the brilliant white mag. +3.5
Meissa – its alternative name, Heka, means
‘the white spot’. The other two bright stars in
the field of view are the sapphire blue mag.
+4.4 Phi1 (q1) and the yellow mag. +4.1 Phi2 (q2)
Orionis, which is actually a foreground star,
not part of the cluster. � SEEN IT

j k
Elnath AURIGA IC 348
Collinder 89 `
M35 PERSEUS
+ d NGC 2129
GEMINI
Berkeley 21
M1
r2 r1 NGC 1746
TAURUS Pleiades
d
c 3 1
CD

NGC 1647
j ¡
i
Collinder 65 Hyades
NGC 2169 b3
_ b1
5 Aldebaran b2 2
a 5° N
6 E
Collinder 69
h
Meissa W
q2
q1 4 h
Betelgeuse _ NGC 1662 S
Bellatrix
a j
+
ORION k
i
NGC 2071
M78

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