Re: Distance Reference for DSOs?

From: Tony Flanders (tony_flanders_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 11/21/04 

Date: 21 Nov 2004 08:17:41 -0800

poster1234us@yahoo.com (Fred) wrote in message news:<5f99b440.0411190507.301c38ca@posting.google.com>...

> It's just an aesthetic thing: I especially enjoy views where objects
> at greatly different distances are close to one another on the
> celestial sphere: the open clusters M35 and NGC 2158 in Gemini or the
> globular clsuters M4 and NGC 6144 in Scorpius.

Understood. It's especially nice in cases like these where the
difference in distance is immediately apparent through the eyepiece.
But I would be hard pressed to guess, based on eyepiece view alone,
whether (say) M36 is closer or farther than M38.

If you're into clusters and you love data, you will sooner or later
need to own the book Star Clusters by Archinal and Hynes. Not perfect
by a long shot, but it's amazingly comprehensive -- the goal being no
less than listing every known cluster, true, false, and suspected,
in the Milk Way and nearby galaxies.

The NGC/IC project website is another utterly invaluable resource.

Galaxy distances are an entirely different kettle of fish from
cluster distances.

    - Tony Flanders

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