What is your favorite Constellation?

I am just wondering what everyones favorite constellation is?

Mines is Perseus because it hosts my favorite meteor shower of the year.

Also NGC 869 and NGC 884 form the well known double Cluster, two open star clusters side by side, easily seen by naked eye or binoculars.
The clusters are both considered babies, 869 only being about 6.5 million years old, and 884 about 11-12 million years old.

For me its Corona Borealis,
I just love the loose star cluster, to me I always visualise somone is holding out an arm and dropping glitter from it, great in binoculars.

For me it's Sagittarius.

Bang in the centre of the milky way. Very rich even in bino's.
Loads of clusters including stunning globulars M22 and M23.
And of course the Lagoon, Trifid and Omega nebulae.
Midsummer 3AM S.E.
Just wish I lived a bit more southerly

Clear skies

Johnno

it has to be Lyra. A diminutive group but chock full of interesting qualities. Steely blue Vega gleams high overhead in the Autumn, swooping low like a bird of prey to hover above the northern skyline these evenings, never setting from our latitude (in fact, Lyra was originally portrayed as an eagle in myth). The star is about as far from the celestial pole as Capella in Auriga giving rise to the interesting characteristic that when Vega is low on the horizon, Capella is overhead, with the two swapping places six months later.

zooming a little closer, you have the exquisite double-double which can be split with the unaided eye but requires a scope to reveal the true nature of Epsilon Lyrae. Imagine a planet whirling about one of the duo and how the other binary system, just 140 times the Earth-Sun distance away, would look to the inhabitants of that world.

the fact that three of the four stars making up the parallelogram shape of Lyra are binocular double stars is pretty neat. One, Delta Lyrae, is part of a loose stellar association called Stephenson 1. Anchoring the bottom right corner of the main body of the constellation is the enigmatic Beta that consists of two stars almost in close contact and grossly distorted by their mutual gravitational attraction (the pair have a more distant companion that is visible in medium-sized binoculars).

deep sky enthuasiasts need no introduction to the ghostly smoke ring of M57, a dying star that has puffed off its outer layers.

. . . and finally, speaking of meteor showers, the April Lyrids are memorable for me in that they were the first meteor shower I watched over a number of nights many years around maximum in order to compile statistics for submission to the International Meteor Organisation.

John

For me its Corona Borealis

. . . should that be Coma Berenices Dave?[/u]

Without a doubt it has to be Orion, for the simple reason that it contains my first and only comet discovery (C/1996 Grennan-Lardner) and for two days and nights kept my heart pumped with adrenalin!

Myself and Dave Grennan were pulling an all-nighter up in Djouce Wood in the depths of winter, and as we were winding down and preparing to pack up, we did a last sweep of Orion before the dawn banished the night's glittering diamonds for another day. The Horizon was brightening when Dave muttered "Hay Phil... I think you need to take a squiz at this" from the top of a rickety ladder propped against the side of his 12.5" Newt. He didn't say what he had seen, wanting to get my impression, and at first all I saw was a bland field of stars against a brightening background. Then I noticed that one star seemed 'a bit soft.'

'Oh' I said, 'I think I see what you're on at. It looks a bit like a comet with that faint halo about a stellar nucleus, doesn't it!' Well, we checked out our maps and nothing showed up - excitement and gleeful rubbing of hands! Before the sky was totally swamped by the dawn, we made a quick drawing of the star field and the position of our 'interloper' as accurately as we could.

That was on a Sunday night. We arranged to be back up in Djouce the next morning an hour before dawn to see if our suspect was showing any motion. Meanwhile, we checked out all the star maps we could get our hands on, and still there was no sign of anything plotted in that vecinity. Excitement was really mounting when we talked on the phone that evening.

Next morning; cold and groggy, we set up the scopes and tracked down our target. Woo Hoo! it was still there!! And we convinced ourselves that it 'just might have moved... just a little' hoo hoo hoo! How do we go about reporting this to CBAT, we wondered? We made a more detailed drawing of the area at different magnifications and went home to salvage what sleep we could before work, and despite the cold, we both had a warm fuzzy glow.

Unfortunately the cold light of dawn put a damper on our spirits. Dave had managed to track down a better star map (remember, this is 1996 or so, and there were very few good maps to be had at a reasonable price) on CD and we discovered to our horror (and embarrasment) that the great comet of that year, Comet Grennan-Lardner-1 was none other thar NGC1999... 'a faint star with nebulosity.' Oh good grief... and we had nearly reported it!!!!

Well, NGC1999 may not have been a 'real' comet, but it provided both of us with a very real thril of discovery! I always check it out when Orion is above the horizon and grin... foolishly!

So there you have it, folks - Orion's yer only man!

For me, it has to be orion!!!