Evening of Monday, October 14, 2002

It was a nice night out, but rather cold. The temperature was just above
freezing when I went outside around 22:00 EDT. The sky was perfectly
clear with no clouds in sight. The moon, which was a bit past first
quarter, was well to the southwest and behind a large bank of tress.
However, the moon was causing some significant (although not excessive)
sky glow. Limiting magnitude was probably only a bit more than 5 over
most of the sky. The Milky Way was visible, but not spectacularly so.

This evening I was using the VTC Astronomy Club's 10x50 binoculars
instead of my usual 7x50s. I found that I liked the higher power pretty
well. Hand holding them was not a problem, even while standing. The
optical performance seemed similar to my 7x50s although I didn't do an
A/B comparison. The club's binoculars don't have a lot of eye relief and
that is somewhat bothersome but it does not prevent them from being used
effectively.

As always I used my 75mm Unitron as my primary telescope.

NGC-663 (Cas). Easy to find. This cluster was visible in binoculars as
an circular fuzzy ball between Delta and Epsilon Cas. In the telescope
it was average size and very obvious. Many member stars were visible
with direct vision and many more were visible with averted vision. The
field was about average to rich. The cluster was well condensed and
overall quite pleasing.

NGC-659 (Cas). This cluster was easy to find because of bright
neighboring stars and its proximity to NGC-663. It was quite small
compared to NGC-663, however, and not nearly as bright and obvious. It
was visible with direct vision but averted vision was needed to really
get a proper view. A couple of member stars were visible, but for the
most part it only looked like a small fuzz ball. It had a mysterious
look to it that I found nice.

NGC-654 (Cas). This cluster is in the same vicinity as NGC-663 and
NGC-659. It's a bit larger than NGC-659 but still fairly small. There
was one fairly bright star involved with the cluster (right on the edge)
but most of the member stars were quite faint and required averted. The
cluster looked very well compacted and would probably be quite
spectacular in a larger instrument. I also caught some glimpses of what
might have been other parts of the cluster in the vicinity of the "main"
cluster. Although they appeared separated from the main cluster in my
'scope, I couldn't help but wonder if perhaps they were all part of a
single, larger object. On the other hand I may have just been seeing
faint star associations. This was a very nice object overall.

M-103 (Cas). This was another small cluster. It was also "attached" to a
fairly bright star and it looked well compacted. Averted vision showed a
number of stars and also some unresolved fuzz. I got the impression that
it was triangular shaped. The spot were this cluster was located was
visible in the binoculars as a "knot" of fuzz but it was really too
small to make much of in the binoculars.

NGC-637 (Cas). I'm only about 85% confident of sighting this object. I
located a small knot of a few stars with some fuzzy haze around them. It
seemed like there was more there than could be accounted for by a random
star association. It didn't look like much in my instrument.

NGC-609 (Cas). No sighting. I scanned the area fairly carefully but saw
nothing that I could feel confident of as being the cluster.

NGC-559 (Cas). This was a very nice object. It was easy to find because
it was just off the corner of a small square of stars. In the 'scope
averted vision was required to see the cluster. The field of view seemed
rather plain but averted show an amorphous fuzzy blob with a sort of
"spray" of fuzziness mixed with stars. I could see a handful of member
stars with direct vision, but by themselves they did't look like much of
a cluster. Nice object.