New DSO: Nick's Cascade

[Steve Gottlieb]

Here in Canada, this object has been known and remarked upon for many years. My observing friends and I have always thought of the chain of stars as a stem and Stock 2 itself as a flower head. No one here ever thought to give the star chain a name.

I’ve seen at least two published references to this chain of stars. The first, in Skiff and Luginbuhl’s “Observing Handbook and Catalogue of Deep Sky Objects” (1990), states (under the entry for Stock 2): “This extended cluster (Stock 2) is easily found at low power in 6 cm by following a curving string of stars for 2° N from oc 869 (h Persei, q.v.).”

The other is in O’Meara’s “The Secret Deep” (2011) in the article on Stock 2: “Visible just north of the cluster’s (Double Cluster) westernmost member (NGC 869), you’ll find a 1.5° long ellipse of about a half-dozen 6th magnitude suns; the two most obvious of which are 7 and 8 Persei, just north of NGC 869.”

I've also known about it for a few decades. An early reference goes back to the mid-19th century! In Reverend T. W. Webb's Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes (1859), he mentions that from the Double Cluster in Perseus "follow the curve of the stars north which leads into a glorious region." The "glorious region" is Stock 2. Sounds quite a bit like Skiff and Luginbuhl, actually. Or vice versa.