Star Deck Observatory DSO of The Month

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