Deep sky · 52
Deep sky
The galaxies, nebulae and star clusters worth going out for — what each one is, who found it, how to find it with binoculars or a small telescope, and whether it is up tonight from where you are.
Galaxies
- Andromeda Galaxy The Andromeda Galaxy — a trillion suns, and the farthest thing most people will ever see with their own eyes.
- Triangulum Galaxy The Triangulum Galaxy: a face-on spiral about 2.7 million light-years away, and a test of the darkest skies.
- Whirlpool Galaxy The Whirlpool Galaxy: the first galaxy anyone saw spiral arms in, in 1845, pulled into shape by the small galaxy tugging at its arm.
- Bode's Galaxy Bode’s Galaxy: one of the brightest galaxies in the sky, a grand spiral with its disturbed companion M 82 beside it.
- Cigar Galaxy The Cigar Galaxy, bursting with new stars after a close brush with its neighbour M 81.
- Pinwheel Galaxy The Pinwheel Galaxy: a huge face-on spiral, nearly twice the width of the Milky Way.
- Sombrero Galaxy The Sombrero Galaxy, seen nearly edge-on, with a bright bulge and a dark belt of dust like the brim of a hat.
- Black Eye Galaxy The Black Eye Galaxy: a spiral with a dark band of dust in front of its core — a black eye.
- Southern Pinwheel Galaxy The Southern Pinwheel: a face-on barred spiral that had six supernovae in the 20th century alone.
- Large Magellanic Cloud The Large Magellanic Cloud: a small galaxy orbiting ours, easy to see by eye from the southern hemisphere, like a torn-off piece of the Milky Way.
- Small Magellanic Cloud The Small Magellanic Cloud: a dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way, where Henrietta Leavitt found the key to measuring the universe.
- Sculptor Galaxy The Sculptor Galaxy: one of the brightest galaxies in the sky, bursting with new stars — found by Caroline Herschel in 1783.
- Centaurus A Centaurus A: a giant galaxy with a dark lane of dust across it — the wreckage of a collision — and one of the loudest radio sources in the sky.
Nebulae
- Trifid Nebula The Trifid Nebula: pink glowing gas, blue reflected light and three dark lanes of dust, all in one small patch of Sagittarius.
- Orion Nebula The Orion Nebula: a star nursery you can see with the naked eye, the middle “star” of Orion’s Sword.
- Omega Nebula The Omega, or Swan, Nebula: one of the brightest star-forming regions in the galaxy, shaped like a swan or a number 2.
- η Car Nebula The Carina Nebula: four times the size of the Orion Nebula, brighter, and home to one of the most massive and unstable stars known.
- Tarantula Nebula The Tarantula Nebula, in the Large Magellanic Cloud — the brightest star-forming region we know, visible to the eye from another galaxy.
- North America Nebula The North America Nebula, shaped just like the continent, beside Deneb.
Reflection nebulae
Planetary nebulae
- Dumbbell Nebula The Dumbbell Nebula, the first planetary nebula ever found — by Charles Messier, in 1764.
- Ring Nebula The Ring Nebula: a smoke ring blown by a dying star, hanging between two stars of Lyra.
- Owl Nebula The Owl Nebula: a pale round face with two dark eyes, the shell of a dying star.
- Helix Nebula The Helix Nebula, one of the nearest planetary nebulae — nicknamed the Eye of God for its photographs.
- Eskimo Nebula A bright planetary nebula in Gemini, like a face in a fur hood — long nicknamed the Eskimo, and now often the Clown-face Nebula.
- Ghost of Jupiter Nebula The Ghost of Jupiter: a planetary nebula the same size and colour as the planet in a small telescope.
- Cat's Eye Nebula The Cat’s Eye Nebula: the first nebula whose light was split into a spectrum — the moment we learned what nebulae are made of.
Supernova remnants
Dark nebulae
Open clusters
- Lagoon Nebula The Lagoon Nebula: a glowing cloud split by a dark lane of dust, visible to the naked eye from a dark site in the Milky Way above the Teapot.
- Wild Duck Cluster The Wild Duck Cluster — a fan of stars that reminded a 19th-century admiral of a flight of ducks.
- Eagle Nebula The Eagle Nebula, home of the Pillars of Creation — columns of gas light-years tall where stars are forming.
- Shoe-Buckle Cluster A rich cluster at Castor’s foot, with a much older, farther cluster, NGC 2158, in the same telescope field.
- Praesepe The Beehive, or Praesepe — “the manger”. A misty patch to the eye that Galileo’s first telescope resolved into 40 stars.
- Pleiades The Pleiades, the Seven Sisters: the most famous star cluster in the world, and part of the stories of nearly every culture.
- Butterfly Cluster The Butterfly Cluster, near the Scorpion’s sting — its stars trace two open wings.
- Ptolemy's Cluster Ptolemy’s Cluster, recorded as a nebula in AD 130 — one of the earliest deep-sky objects in any catalogue.
- h Persei Half of the Double Cluster — two rich clusters side by side, visible to the naked eye between Perseus and Cassiopeia.
- χ Persei The other half of the Double Cluster in Perseus. Its twin is NGC 869, just next door.
- Jewel Box The Jewel Box, beside the Southern Cross — blue-white stars with one striking red supergiant among them.
- Hyades The Hyades, the bull’s face: the nearest open cluster to Earth, and the V around the red eye of Aldebaran.
- Rosette Nebula The Rosette: a young cluster with a wreath of glowing hydrogen around it, like a rose. Its stars have blown a hole in its middle.
- Coma Star Cluster The Coma Star Cluster: the loose spray of faint stars that is Queen Berenice’s hair.
- Dragonfly Cluster The Owl, or E.T., Cluster in Cassiopeia: two bright stars for eyes, and outstretched arms of fainter ones.
- Coathanger The Coathanger: ten stars that make an upside-down clothes hanger, a surprise in binoculars.
Globular clusters
- Great Star Cluster in Hercules The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules: several hundred thousand stars in a ball 150 light-years across.
- Great Sagittarius Cluster One of the nearest globular clusters, and among the first ever discovered — found in 1665 by a German amateur, Abraham Ihle.
- M 3 A great globular cluster of half a million stars, full of stars that pulse — more variable stars than any other known cluster.
- Rose Cluster One of the oldest and finest globular clusters in the northern sky, about 13 billion years old.
- ω Cen Cluster Omega Centauri, the largest globular cluster in the Milky Way: ten million stars — and perhaps the core of a galaxy the Milky Way ate.
- 47 Tuc 47 Tucanae, the second-brightest globular cluster — a naked-eye fuzzy star beside the Small Magellanic Cloud.