- Darrington — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
The town of Darrington, located in Snohomish County 30 miles east of Arlington, was once known as the Burn or Sauk Portage. Darrington got its name from the flip of a card. With settlement beginning in the early 1890s, it gained its reputation as a jumping-off place for mineral exploration and later, logging. Never incorporated until 1945, it remained a rough and tumble place well into the 1950s. Today it is the gateway to exceptional outdoor activities such as hiking, mountain climbing, and other outdoor recreation, and hosts an annual bluegrass festival and an annual rodeo. Currently it numbers 1,500 citizens.
- NGC 7662 (Wikipedia)
NGC 7662 is a planetary nebula located in the northern constellation Andromeda. It is known as the Blue Snowball Nebula, Snowball Nebula, and Caldwell 22. This nebula was discovered October 6, 1784 by the German-born English astronomer William Herschel. In the New General Catalogue it is described as a “magnificent planetary or annular nebula, very bright, pretty small in angular size, round, blue, variable nucleus”. The object has an apparent visual magnitude of 8.3 and spans an angular size of 32″ × 28″. Parallax measurements give a distance estimate of 5,730 ± 340 ly (1,757 ± 103 pc).
