Forget East and West, Look Up!

Last night I decided to look for something different and decided on C39 (or Mel 20 depending on which catalogue you use) and aimed the tripod at C39 using the given co-ordinates. It said it was in Perseus but I don't think I quite understand how star charts would "wrap around" your head if you looked at them yet. Anyways.....I pointed the telescope almost straight up into Perseus' "Sword handle" and, my word, forget your East and West, look up! It's my first galactic cluster and I was amazed at the 100's of stars visible in the 10mm eyepiece. As I moved the slow motion controls backwards and forward there was just more and more stars. I will try and get a picture but in the meantime the picture, on the right, is an image taken from the European Southern Observatory. This is a wide-view picture of what I saw.

In future posts I will try and take my own picture of the cluster so we can compare and contrast between the images taken in a Sheffield back garden and ones from the European Southern Observatory!

AL