Double Cluster

The waning moon is clearing the way for some terrific evening stargazing, while Mars and Jupiter are putting on a nice show in the morning sky.

We'll also catch up with Saturn, look for Venus returning to the dawn, and visit some of autumn's finest celestial attractions, including the Andromeda Galaxy, the Double Cluster, and the Pleiades.

Also, scientists just announced last week the discovery of what might be a new dwarf planet here in our solar system.

It's probably not a candidate for the elusive Planet 9, but one of what will likely be many new discoveries by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

Look for a soft oval glow with its central region easiest to see.

Then move northward to the familiar W of Cassiopeia.

Between Cassiopeia and Perseus lies the double cluster, two neighboring open star clusters that binoculars can show in the same field.

Under a dark sky, your eyes alone may pick out a hazy patch there.

NGC 869 and NGC 884 are two open star clusters sitting side by side in Perseus, near the border with Cassiopeia.

Together, they're known as the double cluster.

From a genuinely dark site, you can see them without any equipment at all as a hazy patch in the Milky Way.

But binoculars are where things get ridiculous.

They're essentially siblings, and very young ones.

Our sun is about 4.6 billion years old.

If its lifetime were compressed into a human lifespan, the double cluster would still be asking whether crayons are food.

And yet, some of their most massive stars have already evolved into red supergiants.

For all I know, others were having the same problem, yet I was having a wonderful time using my binoculars.

The double cluster in Perseus was beautiful.

The Pleiades, magnificent.

Andromeda was where it always is.

Sunlight had traveled to earth, reflected from our planet toward the moon, and then bounced back again toward my eyes.

There's something wonderful about that, the earth itself was illuminating another world.

I returned to the double cluster in Perseus, two lovely gatherings of stars sharing the same broad field of view.

And I checked in with Andromeda again.

For another binocular target, find the W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia in the northeastern sky.

Between Cassiopeia and Perseus lies the Double Cluster, two rich, open star clusters that share the same field of view.

From a dark location, they form a faint, hazy patch to the naked eye.

Through binoculars, the haze begins to break into dozens of tiny stars.