Messier at home project (
http://www.arciereceleste.it/menu-profondo-cielo/118-progetto-m-h-messier-at-home,
https://youtu.be/BQMkAgbyhUQ)
The target is trivial for those who make astrophotography a challenge, but personally I find open clusters extremely fascinating.
After the simple processing, while I was observing the image in detail, I noticed a small bright red dot, definitely TOO red and I immediately thought of an image defect.
Doing further investigations, however, I immediately realized that it was a real source (See Image B).
So I wanted to try the new star catalogs included in PixInsight: doing a search on the GAIA DR3 catalog I found that the source has a parallax of 0.0945 milliseconds of arc which corresponds to a distance of about 34,500 light years, so it is a galactic source.
But in this area we are on the plane of the Milky Way, therefore an object at 34,500 light years should undergo a very strong reddening by interstellar dust, and this is the reason for its dark red colour.
To confirm my hypothesis I also did a search in the brand new GAIA DR3/SP (which contains, in addition to astrometric data also the spectra of about 220 million stars) and with great satisfaction I was able to identify the source and extract its spectrum. ( See Image C)
As can be seen, the intensity of the star in the visible range between 400 and 700 nm is practically insignificant compared to the near infrared.
And here's how, from the outskirts of Brescia, with advanced amateur equipment, you can do a little armchair astrophysics.
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