Melotte 20 or MEL 20, An Open Cluster - Very Up Close (niteman1946)

Melotte 20 or MEL 20, An Open Cluster - Very Up Close

Where the heck are we???

The Alpha Persei Cluster, also known as Melotte 20 or Collinder 39, is an open cluster in the constellation of Perseus. To the naked eye, the cluster consists of several blue spectral type B type stars. The most luminous member is the ~2nd magnitude white-yellow supergiant Mirfak, also known as Alpha Persei. Bright members also include Delta, Epsilon, Psi, 29, 30, 34 and 48 Persei. The Hipparcos satellite and infrared color-magnitude diagram fitting have been used to establish a distance to the cluster of ~172 pc. The distance established via the independent analyses agree, thereby making the cluster an important rung on the cosmic distance ladder. The age of this cluster is about 50-70 million years. [Source: Wikipedia]

Mirfak, (Alpha Persei), is surrounded by the star cluster Melotte 20, which in turn is part of the small OB association Per OB3. Per OB3 is all that remains of the once large Cassiopeia-Taurus OB association, which gave birth to the Gould Belt system of bright stars that is the major component of the neighbourhood of our solar system. [Source: Galaxy Map]

The image was captured with the Meade 12"LX200, using the Atik 383L+ mono at F7.16. Astronomik's LRGB filters were used. All subs were taken at 1x1 bin, -10C, and 10 minutes each.

Image:

Lum : 15 subs (2.50 hr) on Oct 22nd.

Red : 15 subs (2.50 hr) on Oct 24th.

Green : 15 subs (2.50 hr) on Oct 25th.

Blue : 15 subs (2.50 hr) on Oct 27th.

Processing was done with PixInsight, following (for the most part) kayronjm's tutorial of Feb. 24th. Only L was used to develop the Luminance image. R, G and B were collected for the color mix.

North is up, and this is a very slight crop. I continue to use the Plate Solve capability within Sequence Generator Pro (using Astrometry), and I am extremely pleased with it.

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Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	397930
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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Melotte 20 or MEL 20, An Open Cluster - Very Up Close

Melotte 20 or MEL 20, An Open Cluster - Very Up Close

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Melotte 20 or MEL 20, An Open Cluster - Very Up Close

Melotte 20 or MEL 20, An Open Cluster - Very Up Close

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