Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)  ·  Contains:  M 39  ·  NGC 7092
M39 - Open Star Cluster in Cygnus, Callum Hayton
M39 - Open Star Cluster in Cygnus
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M39 - Open Star Cluster in Cygnus

M39 - Open Star Cluster in Cygnus, Callum Hayton
M39 - Open Star Cluster in Cygnus
Powered byPixInsight

M39 - Open Star Cluster in Cygnus

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Description

M39 is an open cluster made up of around 30-50 stars in the summer constellation of Cygnus the swan. It is located around 800 light years away (1 light year = 6 trillion miles) and is estimated to be around 300 million years old. These stars are very young and hot which is shown by their blue colour, compare these to our star which is 4.5 billion years old.

With the constellation Cygnus lying on the galactic plane, the cluster sits in front of millions of other solar masses that make up our Milky Way galaxy, and this is only a tiny portion of our night sky.

The aim here was to use longer exposures to try and bring out some of the dust globules in the area which you dont see captured too often. I did pick up a little but sacrificed star size. Other than star reduction in Photoshop this was my first image processed entirely with the trial version of Pixinsight, a piece of dedicated astronomical image processing software.

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M39 - Open Star Cluster in Cygnus, Callum Hayton