Off the Beaten Path With Steve Gottlieb

Hickson 87

Do you find you're returning to the same group of favorite objects season after season because, well, you're just not sure where else to turn? These pages will introduce you to some interesting targets which are off the beaten path -- and will challenge everyone from beginners to seasoned veterans. Some are accessible to 8-inch scopes in good conditions, but many will tax the observing skill of the 16-inch and larger crowd.

Most of these objects were observed with my 17.5-inch f/4.4 Dobsonian from the Sierra foothills in northern California at a site with an average naked-eye limit of 6.5. Many will require using detailed finder charts to pinpoint the location and for some you'll need a narrow bandpass nebula filter. I typically use wide-field eyepieces yielding 220x-280x on deep sky objects and the DSS images accompanying the descriptions generally have corresponding fields of about 14 x 20 arcminutes.--Steve Gottlieb