The Caldwell Objects

Through the 4-inch, NGC 1275 is less a firefly and
more a piece of starlit lint. The galaxy is the most
obvious of the 19 cluster members plotted on the
Millennium Star Atlas, and lies about 2° eastnortheast
of Algol. (A more detailed chart of the
cluster appears on page 192 of Christian
Luginbuhl and Brian Skiff's Observing Handbook
and Catalogue of Deep-Sky Objects; it was used to
label the cluster's galaxies by their NGC numbers
on the photograph on page 100.) The galaxy is
little more than a star with a faint coma, like a
distant comet just starting to turn on. Luginbuhl
and Skiff note that through a 6-inch telescope this
coma measures 30" and its size increases to 1’ in a
12-inch. They also note that the starlike nucleus
appears to lie a little west of the coma's geometric
center.
Identifying the cluster members surrounding
NGC 1275 can be confusing and probably
requires a large aperture; views of them through
the Genesis were fleeting at best. Texas amateur
Barbara Wilson had success with a 13.1-inch f/4.5
reflector and 115x from Twain Harte, California.
She describes the cluster's members in the
following way: "NGC 1272 is the 2nd largest,
round but fainter than NGC 1275. NGC 1273 is
smaller than NGC 1272 but has a high-
The Caldwell Objects
24
er surface brightness. NGC 1277 and 1278 at first
appeared singular due to poor seeing, with NGC
1277 being very small and lying just northeast of
NGC 1275. When the seeing settled down NGC
1278 was clearly separated from NGC 1277 —
NGC 1278 is the brighter of the two, larger and
elongated, and pretty faint. NGC 1281 is a very
elongated, small galaxy near a magnitude-10
star. NGC 1270 is a small, slightly elongated
elliptical southwest of NGC 1272."
The magic of the Perseus Cluster lies not in
our visual impressions through modest backyard
telescopes but in our understanding of the
region's unseen turmoil. As with a snapshot of a
busy city street, different scenes simultaneously
unfold in the cluster before the mind's eye. By
glancing into this tiny area of space we "see" one
galaxy eating another, volcanic nuclei shooting
debris into intergalactic space, and galaxies
churning up wakes as they sail through an
intergalactic sea of ionized gas. The snapshot
shows a dramatic cosmic moment some 230
million years in the past — a relatively quiet time
on Earth, when the earliest sharks ruled the seas
and lizards stalked the fragile shores of Pangaea.
It was a time when our ancestors cowered in the
shadows of the night and could not contemplate
the universe.
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