The Caldwell Objects

It's a nice even disk of l0th-magnitude suns
punctuated to the north-northeast by a 9thmagnitude
"beacon." The cluster's core has a dark
central hole (dust?) and a thick northwestsoutheast-trending
dark lane to the west.
Together, these two dark masses look like the
number "10" when viewed with south up, as in
an equatorially mounted Newtonian sited in the
Northern Hemisphere. In the 4-inch I also
81
noted an uncataloged cluster or asterism of 10th-
to 12th-magnitude suns in a line (oriented
northwest-southeast) halfway between Alpha
Arae and NGC 6352. Can you see this? Another
brighter 20'-wide asterism lies 1¾° northeast of
Alpha Arae; it, too, forms a slightly curved line
(also oriented northwest-southeast) with about
eight suns ranging from 6th to 10th magnitude.
The Caldwell Objects 327