NGC 2281

Historical observations

William Herschel (c.1784)

Synonyms: H VIII-071

Discovered in 1788 by William Herschel with an 18.7-inch f/13 speculum telescope. He called it "a cluster of coarsely scattered pretty large stars, pretty rich, the place is that of a double star of the third class."

Published comments

Trumpler, R.J. (1928)

Trumpler (Lick Obs Bul, Vol 14, No. 420) gives the diameter as 15' and the class as 1 3 p.

This open cluster in Auriga is about 6th magnitude, and can be seen with the naked eye. In small telescopes, it appears as a small grouping of stars spanning about 18'. Low powers make the cluster contrast nicely with the background field stars. Burnham calls it a large, bright very little compressed cluster , 15' across, of about 30 stars of 7th mag and fainter.

Vorontsov-Velyaminov, B. (1925/1926)

Vorontsov-Velyaminov, B. (1925) "Catalogue of integrated magnitudes of star clusters", Astron. Nach. 226.195. Comparing the brightness of the cluster with the extrafocal images of stars, he estimates the magnitude as 6.35.

Raab, S. (1922)

Raab, S. (1922) A research on open clusters. Lund Medd. Astron. Obs. Ser. II, 28, 1.

Discussed, based of F-A plates.

Melotte, P.J. (1915)

A catalogue of star clusters shown on Franklin-Adams chart plates. Mem.R.A.S., 60(5), 175-186.

Bailey, S.I. (1908)

"cluster, coarse."

Bailey, S.I. (1908) A catalogue of bright stars and nebulae. Ann.Harv.Coll.Obs., 60(8), 199.

Sulentic & Tifft (1973)

The RNGC (Sulentic and Tifft 1973) notes that this is a 7.0 mag open cluster.

Doig, P. (1926)

"A Catalogue of Estimated Parallaxes of 112 Nebulae, Open clusters and Star Groups", Vol 36 (4), p 107-115.

"thin, irregular, fairly bright stars." He gives the approx. diameter as 18 arcmin.

Modern observations

Ancient City Astron.Club (1980)

Listed by the Herschel Club, described as "some 30 stars counted, very bright cluster, large, stands out well. 8-inch, 48x."

Walter Scott Houston

Houston calls this a seldom-observed cluster: "This handful of stars, whose total light is equivalent to mag 6.7, is scattered over an area 0.3 degrees across. To the northeast of the cluster, photographs reveal a lane about 0.6 degrees across that contains very few stars. I have tried many times to discern this lane but with inconclusive results. My most encouraging observations were with 5-inch 20x binoculars; on at least a half dozen nights I thought I saw this dark 'tail' of NGC 2284." A photograph of the cluster is shown in S&T, Feb. 1975, p127.

Tom Lorenzin

Tom Lorenzin, in the electronic version of "1000+ The Amateur Astronomers' Field Guide to Deep Sky Observing", notes: "5.4M; 15' diameter; 30-plus bright (7M and dimmer) members; good binocular object 45' SSW of Psi 7 AUR."

Brian Skiff

Yoshizawa: diamond pair NE: V=9.0,10.6; pair S: V=10.1,10.6.

6cm - noticeably elong central region. 25 *s w/four in diamond *ism in center.

7cm - nice lg br cl @ 30x. 50x: 25' diam, reaching m7 * on N, 50 *s irreg scattered yet well concen twd center, where diamond is consp. 75x resolves pair in S side of diamond. BS, 15Apr1993, Anderson Mesa.

15cm - fairly br cl w/30 *s m7-10.5. 20' diam. sl condensed twd center. sev close dbls. HM/BS, 28Nov1970, FtL.

- br but rel sparse cl @ 80x. 15' diam w/mod concen across center. cen diamond clearly res into six *s incl two pairs. 140x shows f * w/in diamond. another pair on E side as well, also res @ 80x. BS, 27Nov1992, Anderson Mesa.

25cm - 90x/180x: fairly sparse cl w/35 *s in 20' area. in center is diamond incl two pairs, one = , the other un=. BS, Roof.

- pairs in diamond: NE * is 9.5,12, on S is side one 11,11.5. m13.5 * inside diamond. many outliers to 40' diam, somewhat concen, but few members. BS, 6Oct1981, Anderson Mesa.

30cm - 149x: 40 *s in loose grp, 20' diam. diamond has two binaries, one of which is contrastingly colored red & blue, 5" sep. CBL, Roof.

Contemporary observations

Tom Bryant

2010 4 9 21:19:5

Observing site: Little Tycho Observatory

Telescope: C-8

[6h 49m 18s, 41° 4m 0s] A lovely, but somewhat sparse, cluster of 30 7-12 mv stars. There are three doubles in it.