HII region
Perseus
RA 04 30 06
DEC +35 17 15
Size 7.8’ x 5.4’

“The main portion of the nebula is by far the brightest, with the other parts much fainter. Filters only dimmed the view so this much be a reflection nebula. Whoever came up with the name “Northern Trifid” wasn’t looking through an eyepiece. 270x”

NGC1579_Northup.JPG NGC1579_Northup_invert.JPG

Those are my notes from a 2007 observation from my local observing site with my 28-inch scope, and I wanted to start with them because this observation makes the point that a telescopic view of NGC 1579 doesn’t at all give the impression that it looks anything like M20, the Trifid Nebula in Sagittarius. It’s misleading name aside, 1579’s distinctive character is more than enough to justify a good, long look through your own scope. By the way, don’t pay attention to the small-scale detail in my very rough sketches – they’re only broad pencil marks, and are representative of what most of my unfinished sketches look like.

Although labeled as an HII region, 1579 doesn’t respond to filters the way most HII regions do. Even so, it’s an active star forming region and is mostly red in the many images posted online. This one on the left was taken by Jens (details at https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/5...bula-ngc-1579/) and is compared to the more visually realistic grey scale DSS image on the right. The small nebulosity to the upper left is IC 2067, which I haven’t seen yet, if only because I didn’t realize it was so close by. Next time!

ngc-1579-lrgb-small.jpg NGC1579_DSS.JPG

Two older observations made with my 20-inch both describe 1579 as a “comet shaped nebula”. Sue French, in her Deep Sky Wonders book describe 1579 as being “easily spotted in my 10-inch reflector at 44x. At 118x, it spans about 6’ and appears quite irregular in shape and intensity” indicating that on a good, dark and transparent night 1579 is accessible to most amateur size scopes while showing a range of satisfying detail.

William Herschel came across this nebulous patch in December 1788, and cataloged it as GC 853: “pretty bright, very large, irregularly round, much brighter middle, 8th magnitude star 2 arcmin distant at position angle 350°" Hopefully your next view of it will be even brighter and more detailed.

Give it a go and let us know.