DEEP SKY CHALLENGE
Track down some lesser known wonders on the next clear and frosty night
As you set up your telescope on freezing cold December nights, it’s always tempting to look at A the same things you always do: the misty, swirling veils of the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades cluster with its stars sparkling like jewels and the Crab Nebula’s ghostly haze all call out to you through your favourite eyepiece. But there is much more to the winter sky than those ‘celebrity’ objects, and if you swing your ice-cold telescope tube towards the constellation of Gemini, put in a high-power eyepiece and go deep – very deep – you can see some lesser known objects that deserve your attention just as much as their more famous neighbours.
Gemini is dominated by the open star cluster Messier 35, one of winter’s showcase objects, and it’s a beautiful sight in anything from a humble binocular to a huge Dobsonian. Scattered around it are much fainter, much more distant objects that are real treats once tracked down. The Eskimo Nebula (NGC 2392) – sometimes known as the Clown Face Nebula – is a lovely, intriguing planetary nebula that shows fascinating detail and structure through a large telescope, while the Twinkling Comet Cluster (NGC 2420) and spiral galaxy NGC 2339, which rests more than 250 million light years away, are also worthwhile targets to seek out with your telescope.
1 NGC 2435
This intermediate spiral galaxy, sitting almost edgeon to us, is 200 million light years away. Measuring just 15 arcminutes across and shining at a very faint 13th
