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DSO Of The Week: March 11, 2007
Open Clusters M46 and M47:
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DSO Of The Week: March 18, 2007
Open Cluster M44 The Bee Hive Cluster:
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No DSO Of The Week for March 25 & April 2, 2007
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Hello!

Welcome to The Star Deck Observatory's DSO of The Month!
This month's choice for The DSO Of The Month was once again bit of a challenge!  It was tough to choose which one of the many great binocular objects would get the feature place on this page.  So, for the month of March I decided to make up for having no DSO of The Month for January and February by selecting more than a single object for the honors. I decided to feature a constellation with several nice binocular targets all with in a few degrees of each other, and easy to find in the early night sky.


I choose the Constellation of Auriga for the DSO of The Month objects the Messier open clusters Messier 36; Messier 37; Messier 38; and stretching the boundaries of Auriga just a bit to the west to include the Messier open cluster Messier 35 in Gemini.  All four of these open clusters are bright enough to easily be seen in even a modest set of 7 x 50 binoculars from even a typical light polluted suburban back yard.  Any of the four clusters will be clearly noticeable as a light fuzzy patch in your binoculars field of view.  In a small telescope you can begin to easily discern individual stars at even modest magnifications.

Auriga and the Messier clusters for this month's DSO are fairly easy to find and spot.  The above Tirion Star Chart of the Auriga Constellation and the area around it will make finding these objects a snap.  Auriga will be crossing the meridian and within the zenith of the sky early in the evening.  Here in the midwest it will be in good position for observations from the onset of darkness through to around midnight for most of the month of March so get out those binoculars & telescopes and enjoy the view!

CS
Mark Jordan
The Mad One
39 47' 06" North / 85 46' 10" West
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DSO Of The Week:
April 8, 2007 -  Open Cluster M50:
DSO Of The Week:
May 6, 2007 - Galaxies M81 & M82
March, 2008
The Constellation Auriga:
A chain of Messier open clusters!
DSO Of The Month:
November, 2007 M27 The Dumbell Nebula
(Click on star chart to see full size chart:)
Tirtion Star Charts Courtesy
Of
NGC 891.com The Observer's Challenge
DSO of The Month:
December 2007 The Double Cluster