Okay... how about this one?

[Ciel Extreme]

bratton1.jpg

I ran across this asterism or cluster on July 25, 1992 while observing with a C-8 in Robertville, New Brunswick. I misidentified the object as NGC7142 (which is nearby). Coordinates are RA 21 39 20, Dec +65 49. Plotted as four stars in the first edition of Uranometria 2000.0, as well as the all-sky edition, one of the stars being the variable V434 in Cepheus. DSS image above is 15'x15'. When I checked SIMBAD, it only gave a long list of single stars, carbon stars, eclipsing binaries... no clusters. I wrote an article about this group in Amateur Astronomy magazine (issue 52... 53... 54? I can’t remember which) called “My Star Cluster”. Shortly after, I received an email from a reader stating that the group was called Pothier 4. Entering “Pothier 4” in the DSS search engine comes up empty. Since Yann is a member of this group, perhaps he could identify this grouping as one that he’s identified previously? Is this group catalogued in DSH?

[Bill Weir]

Hi Mark

I just looked through the DSH database of asterisms and yes this group is listed as Pothier 4.

Bill

[Ciel Extreme]

Thanks Bill. I tracked it down as well, late last night

[yapo]

Hi Mark,

I followed the same observing path as you did, in 1992 but I think to remember that the Uranometria 2000 charts fouled me at the time and I later got it right (about which star group was NGC 7142 in fact). I wrote with a Meade 8" SCT "at 145x, 10 stars between 11th and 13th mag. are homogeneously scattered upon a 5’x3’ area, elongated N-S; a mag.10 star is against the N border, one of mag.9.5 is 6’SE and 2 stars of 9th and 10th mag. are at 13’SW."

clear skies,
Yann

[Marko]

This one seems to look like an 'M' however it could just as easily be an upper case Sigma.
I had not noted it in any observation even though I have fairly detailed observations of N7129, N7133 and N7142. Guess it was a bit too far out of my 'region of interest'.

My oldest observation of Ngc7129/Ngc7133 is a bit comical as I had a vivid imagination and nammed the objects: 'ManOnChair'
FYI: No .. had not been intoxicated in any way but it was 1:40 so maybe I was a bit in 'dream mode'.

My notes from 2009:
Ngc7129_ManOnChair: 5' len NS. Guy sitting with head to South, legs out to East at 140dPA to SE. Nebula in his 'lap'.

[Steve Gottlieb]

Ngc7129_ManOnChair: 5' len NS. Guy sitting with head to South, legs out to East at 140dPA to SE. Nebula in his 'lap'.

Are you sure we're talking astronomy, Marko? ;-)