Lepus the Hare is not endowed with many deep sky objects but it is home to an unusual one, namely a winter globular cluster, M79. It is located near the bottom edge of the image and it's clear that this cluster is quite small compared to the open clusters in this part of the sky and to many of the other globular clusters in the Messier catalog. At the upper right edge of the image, we also mark the location of R Leporis, which based on a comparison of its brightness to those of its neighboring stars, I would say is about magnitude 10 or 10.5 on this evening, which is definitely on the dim side (it ranges down to a minimum magnitude of about 11.7). Unannotated image. |