BINOCULAR TOUR

Meet a swan, a butterfly and a duck on a tour around Sagittarius's Teapot

Steve Tonkin

1. The Scutum Star Cloud This fabulously rich star cloud is so easy to find that it has been mistaken for a real cloud on a clear night. Once you have it in your binoculars, look for the ripples of stars formed by the tenuous dark nebulae that weave among them. You will also see the densest of all open clusters, M11, the Wild Duck Cluster, which is an even richer condensation of nearly 3,000 hot blue stars. ■ SEEN IT 2. The Swan Nebula, M17 Use the chart to help you identify Gamma (γ) Scuti, then pan 2.5° to the southwest where you will find the misty patch that Charles Messier described as “a train of light without stars, in the shape of a spindle, of five or six…

You're reading a preview of

BBC Sky at Night United Kingdom (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2024

DiscountMags is a licensed distributor (not a publisher) of the above content and Publication through Zinio LLC. Accordingly, we have no editorial control over the Publications. Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers or other information or content expressed or made available by third parties, including those made in Publications offered on our website, are those of the respective author(s) or publisher(s) and not of DiscountMags. DiscountMags does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, truthfulness, or usefulness of all or any portion of any publication or any services or offers made by third parties, nor will we be liable for any loss or damage caused by your reliance on information contained in any Publication, or your use of services offered, or your acceptance of any offers made through the Service or the Publications. For content removal requests, please contact Zinio.