I imaged the open cluster NGC 2301 the same night I did the Poor Man's Cluster. I was looking for something other than a Ha-nebula since that seems to be what I have been focusing on (The Jellyfish, Monkey Head, Cone, and currently the Seagull Nebula) recently. It will end soon though as galaxy season is just beginning.
Being a science fiction buff I chose NGC 2301 because of the nickname, Hagrids's Dragon Cluster, which was coined by Stephen James O'Meara in his book, Deep-Sky Companions: Hidden Treasures. I am glad I did as it turned out surprisingly well. It is situated in Monoceros at a distance of 2,450-2,840 light-years away (depending on the source), and is estimated to be 160 million years old. The cluster is made up of approximately 100 stars. It is detached from the background sky due to a number of bright member stars running vertically (source: astronomy).
It is no secret that like colorful stars, maybe vibrance a little too much, but I did very little saturation with this image. The colors really came out like this after stacking. For some reason my camera only saved the jpeg flats (could not use) so vignetting gradients were really bad. To remove them I created a new image and blurred it with dust & scratches. Next, I subtracted it from the original layer and wound up with a flat image. This method works really well with small galaxies and clusters, for large objects and nebulae, I use gradient exterminator (method description:
http://kurt-zeppetello.blogspot.com/2017/04/gradient-test-with-m94.html).
Version A - Wide Field
Version B - Crop
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