The Caldwell Objects

43 & 44
NGC 7814 (CALDWELL 43) AND NGC 7479
(Caldwell 44) are two of the many reasonably
bright galaxies residing in or near the Great
Square of Pegasus. Grand and conspicuous, the
Great Square is autumn's hallmark aster-ism. It
portrays the mythical winged horse born from a
vile mixture of sea foam and the blood that
dripped from Medusa's freshly severed head. The
Square's four corner stars all shine brightly at 2nd
or 3rd magnitude. Its vast, 15°-wide interior, by
contrast, is bleak.* Naked-eye stars (mostly dim)
can be seen within the Square, but the density of
starlight there seems inconsiderable when
compared to one of summer's hallmark asterisms,
such as the Teapot of Sagittarius. That's because
when we look toward Pegasus we look high
above our galaxy's dusty, star-studded plane,
where a thin veil of starlight hardly obstructs the
heavens beyond. Galaxy hunters actually prefer
this kind of bland celestial backdrop. To them,
the Great Square is like a clean window through
which they can gaze upon the universe's most
distant reaches.
Deep-sky observers of all levels have learned
to use the Great Square to their advantage. In a
sense, the Square is autumn's Grand Celestial
Station. Riding their telescopes like trains,
observers can depart from any of the Square's
corners for different extragalactic destinations.
For instance, beginners can use the northeastern
corner star, Alpha (α) Andromedae, or
Alpheratz, as their departure
*Some skywatchers judge the clarity of autumn nights by counting naked-
eye stars within the Great Square. If they see a dozen or so stars, the
naked-eye limit is about magnitude 6.0. Triple that number and the limit
is down to roughly magnitude 6.5. Since the Square contains about 70
stars brighter than magnitude 7.0, I don't encourage observers under very
dark skies to perform this exercise. They should rate the sky's trans-
parency by scouting out a few particular stars of magnitude 6.5 and
fainter.
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point for M31, the Great Andromeda Galaxy;
they just travel two stops eastbound — Delta (δ),
then Beta (β) Andromedae — before heading
northbound past Mu (μ) and Nu (ν) Andromedae
to M31. Observers traveling to NGC 7331
(Caldwell 30) usually depart from Beta (β) Pegasi,
or Scheat, the Square's northwestern corner, and
head one stop northwest to Eta (η) Pegasi before
taking the northbound express to their
destination. And so it is with the two southern
stars in the Great Square.
They lead us to our next two Caldwell destinations:
the spiral galaxies NGC 7814 (Caldwell 43)
and NGC 7479 (Caldwell 44).
NGC 7814 lies only 2½° west-northwest of
Gamma (γ) Pegasi, the southeastern corner star.
If you own a large telescope, don't mistake the
12th-magnitude galaxy NGC 14, which lies
halfway between Gamma Pegasi and NGC 7814,
for your target; both galaxies have bright central
regions.
To find NGC 7814 start by surveying the
Gamma Pegasi area with binoculars. Gamma
Pegasi is the brightest star in a hooklike aster-ism
of equally spaced binocular stars. I use this
Deep-Sky Companions: The Caldwell Objects