Light Cup Hot Tip: Clusters Clusters

We've all heard about light buckets talking about galaxies group (eg. Hickson, Abell, etc.), i.e., groups of galaxies. Well, I haven't heard anyone talk about open clusters group until my 4" TV-102 Light Cup showed one of them to me tonight: NGC 2567, NGC 2571, NGC 2587 and NGC 2580. in Puppis forming an odd looking trapezoid shape as shown here.

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The group is large, but fit nicely within the 3d FOV of my 40mm Pentax XL. NGC 2567 appears to be the largest (although the actual size from the chart is smaller than the others) with about 5-6 dim pin pricked teeny speck of stars. NGC 2571 is the brightest of the group with 4 prominent stars in it. NGC 2587 is a very dim halo
with 1 prominent star. NGC 2580 is the dimmest and loosest of the 4, registering as only a vaguely defined dim patch.

Henceforth, the Light Cup christens this open clusters group as the "Puppis 25 Group" ;-). [Light Cup Trivial: where does the number 25 comes from ;-)?] Question: are there any other open clusters group elsewhere?

Lastly, the Light Cup showed me the Plaskett's Star (desinated HD 47129). This is a giant double star system, the most massive yet discovered, by John Plaskett in 1922. He arrives at the mass of of 90 Suns for each star! I estimate its magnitude to be close to the mag 6.3 star SAO 114293. Well, I went all the way to 176x and couldn't split it :-(. Umm, the airy disc doesn't show very massive
either ;-).

It seems like the TV-102 Light Cup doesn't stop showing me new things (for small apertures) to look at!

Ron B[ee]

Ron,

I know there are clusters grouped closely in Monoceros. The area just north and east of The Rosette is loaded with clusters. Within a 3° circle you will see 5 or 6 clusters, dominated on the southwest by the cluster 2244 at the center of the rosette nebula.

The area at the east end of Cas, Ssarting with M103 and just north and east includes 3 more bright clusters, 1 faint, TR1, 654, 659, 663. The last three impressive in binoculars.

Also in Cas, just north and west of Y Cas is a small group of three faint clusters including King14, the other two, ngc133 & ngc146 are not shown in SkyAtlas 2000.0. these are a tight group about 1/2° north of k Cas.

There are five more clusters just south of this area in Cas all within 2°, between Y Cas and B Cas. Bounded on the east by NGC 225 and on the south by NGC 129 and on the northwest by 12 Cas. The other three clusters, not shown in SkyAtlas 2000.0 are ngc136 ngc103 and St24

A little further east from Cas, you should be able to capture Stock 2 at the same time with the double cluster in Perseus at the very limit of 3°. Very impressive.

some of these are pretty faint. good luck
edz