My New Constellation Challenge for August

So last night I spent a few hours after 11pm poking around the internet too study the deep sky area of Cassiopeia. I've been observing the deep sky around her for at least 10 years and I still love  too see what else I can find. I am having a complete blast with my scope Ambrosia out there these past two weeks. Some stargazers and deep sky visual observers really have some spectacular websites on persuing their deep sky hunting passion and what you can find out there.

I want to share some of the pages and people I came across. I armed myself with Sue French's Celestial Sampler, Orion Deep Map 600, a notebook and pencil and started with Cassiopeia and it turned out I made an exciting discovery! I was looking at a map of the Cassiopeia/ Cepheus area and realized of all the 9 years of exploring the night sky with Story I have not explored Cepheus yet. wow 10 years later and I have a 'not explored it yet' on my list. how is that possible? have I actually explored it and don't remember it?

I hopped off my bed and on my closet I pulled out my little box of my notebooks containing all of my observing notes. I have not one entry of exploring Cepheus. I'm thinking as I put them back up on my shelf  maybe I didn't write it down. Well I am not going to question it I am going to be excited to explore a new constellation! Wow how can I miss it? So I popped back into google and browsed the Cepheus sites and looked through my astronomy books I have on observing the constellations etc and nope not one piece of paper, caught up by gravity falling out as I go through the pages. Come on gravity work with me.

I've made the constellations my old friends, time to make a new one. So I  started my trek online seeing what is in Cephius to gobble up in my scope. I of course know what is in it, now is the time to get visual with it.  Now for the interesting websites I have found. To amazing not to share and enjoy them.

Starchasers   Eagle Creek Observatory on Cepheus   Knoxville Observers on Cepheus


Astronomy Resources (Lots of interesting links there)   Weather Forecast For Astronomy

Sky Atlas Observing Logbook  <-----  I LOVE IT!    Space Dog    FaintFuzzies 

Same lady, two nice pages--->   IVM's Deep Sky Blog    FJ Astronomy


No matter how many years you have been  observing, how good your skills get or the fact that you know where every  deep sky object, double star etc is, always save some space for meeting new friends down the cosmic road.