While observing double stars over the last few months, I came across a couple of little known asterisms that are worth a look.
I noticed the first when observing ES 42, aka ADS310 (RA 00:22:52, Dec +54:17:54, magnitudes 8.4 & 9.4, separation 7"). This double consists of a golden-orange primary, with a tiny speck very close beside it at 50X. It is not particularly interesting, but what caught my eye was that it was the central star of an obvious W-shaped asterism of relatively faint, but quite distinct, stars in a rich field. The asterism is another "little Cassopeia", quite a good likeness of the original, located within the 'parent' constellation. A search revealed that it was recorded by the Brazilian amateur Bruno Sampaio Alessi, and is listed in the Deep Sky Hunter's list of asterisms as Alessi J0022.7+5417. However, Jaakko Saloranto, a Finnish amateur well known for his observations and sketches of deep sky objects, has suggested (
fdsa-blog.blogspot.ie/2013/08/johann-bod...ee-lost-objects.html
) that this asterism was originally noted by Johann Bode and included in a list of 75 objects in 1777 in the "Astronomisches Jahrbuch". Interestingly, he suggests that, around 1782, Bode also discovered the famous "Little Queen" asterism in Draco that is often referred to as Kemble 2 (
www.deep-sky.co.uk/asterisms.htm
).
A second asterism suggested itself while observing STF 2896 (RA 22:18:28, Dec +63:13:22, magnitudes 7.8 & 8.6, separation 21"). This is a nice pair of yellowish stars, mildly unequal and well separated at 50X. In my first observation in 2012 I noted that it was at one corner of a triangle made up of several faint stars, that looked like a small cluster. In more recent observations using a larger aperture (280mm) I noticed that several other faint stars form a line that extends one side of the triangle in both directions, forming a 'witch's hat' asterism. The witch's hat shape is quite distinct, though the stars making up the eastern end of the brim are very faint. The relatively bright stars of the double look like baleful eyes just below the 'brim' of the hat. As far as I know, this shape has not been pointed out previously.
Of course the human mind is very adept at joining stellar dots to form shapes in the sky, and such asterisms are numerous and of no significance. Nevertheless, they are fun to observe and to search for. I try always to look at the field surrounding the targets I am observing in the hope of spotting nice patterns. I would be very interested to know if any others see the "little Cassopeia" and the "witch's hat", with their inhabitant doubles. They are rather faint but should be oservable with medium sized scopes, and I would be delighted to hear of other observations.
Thanks for reading, Mike.
  