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Utah Women Astronomical Society
Three essential binocular sky targets:
What are some of your favorites?
The Moon
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Look for the terminator line: the dividing line between light and shadow, or day and night, on the moon. This is the line of sunrise, or sunset, on the moon.
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Look for rilles; the huge, dark maria (dry lava beds); and craters where brighter debris has splashed across the moon’s surface.
Double stars
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Mizar and Alcor: located at the bend of the handle in the Big Dipper. These two stars appear 12 arc minutes apart from our point of view.
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Theta Tauri: At 5 1/2 arc minutes apart
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Theta Tauri, at magnitude 3.8, is found in the V-shape of Taurus’ head, Can you use your binoculars to spot spot a yellowish color in Theta 1 and a bluish hue in Theta 2?
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Open Star Clusters are groups of young stars born together out of the same cloud of gas.
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Pleiades Cluster (M45) in Taurus, a fuzzy patch of six to seven stars seen with the unaided eye. 1.6 magnitude grouping of 30-70 stars
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Beehive Cluster (M44) at the center of Cancer. 3.4-magnitude of more than 40 stars. How many can you see in binoculars?
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In the Southern Hemisphere, the Jewel Box cluster, in the constellation Crux, is one of the youngest known clusters at 14 million years old. Can you spot a pyramidal shape to the cluster through binoculars?
For more binocular targets visit:
Best Observing Targets for Binoculars by Kelly Kizer Whitt at EarthSky.com
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