I sat down on the night of December 18, 2020 with my 8" SCT and a 32mm Highpoint Scientific Plossl eyepiece in the diagonal and began to observe the object. This open cluster is about half a degree in size, so it is a tight fit in my field of view. I centered the brightest part of the cluster in my field of view and began sketching. While I've never heard a name associated with this open cluster if you look inside of the free astronomy software, Stellarium, you'll see it referred to as the Lawnmower Cluster.
While there were some bright stars in the center of the field of view, most of the stars within the cluster were relatively dim. There were portions in my field of view which looked empty and I'm not sure if it is because there were no stars, or I was just unable to resolve the stars in those spots. Visually I didn't see much color to the stars in the cluster, maybe a slight yellow coloring, but I left that out of my final image because it was so subtle I couldn't tell if it was actual color, or if I was seeing thing.
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| NGC663 in the constellation Cassiopeia |
This sketch was done on black Canson paper with a General's white charcoal pencil and a kneaded eraser. Then brought in and took a picture of it and brought it into GIMP where I created the eyepiece field of view, the text around the outside, and touched up the image a little bit where there were a few smudges. I really need to remember to fix my stars before taking the picture! I promise that will be something I try to do in my sketches of 2021.
If you'd like to see where to find this object in the night sky along with a time lapse of me sketching this at the eyepiece be sure to check out the video:
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