We are all treasure hunters – storybook pirates searching for riches in the endless sea above. Taking the helms of our telescopes, we lay a course among the stars with the sails of our imaginations open. And what wonders await us as we make our way through the charted territories of the Milky Way: rich, open clusters of hot, young stars, some still swaddled in their nascent nebulosities; ancient globular clusters, the senior citizens of our galaxy, whose teeming suns are packed together like gold doubloons in a sea chest; there are galaxies too numerous to mention lurking beyond our forest of stars, living out their lives in various stages of evolution; and then there are the ghosts – the smoky shells of dying stars, whose very nature reminds us of the ultimate fate of our life-giving Sun.

These celestial treasures cannot be plundered. They can only make us feel, as Joseph Conrad writes in his 1902 adventure novel, Heart of Darkness, “meditative, and fit for nothing but placid staring.” And there are jewels in the night almost too numerous to mention, some of which rarely get viewed by amateur astronomers. That is why novel lists of neglected deep-sky objects are becoming increasingly popular among observers. And that is why I created this book.

Hidden Treasures is the third title in my Deep-Sky Companions series – the other two books are Deep-Sky Companions: The Messier Objects and Deep-Sky Companions: The Caldwell Objects. This latest work fills an important void.