From Wikipedia:
Messier 37 (also known as M37 or NGC 2099) is the brightest and richest open cluster in the constellation Auriga. It was discovered by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna before 1654. M37 was missed by French astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil when he rediscovered M36 and M38 in 1749. French astronomer Charles Messier independently rediscovered M37 in September 1764 but all three of these clusters were recorded by Hodierna. It is classified as Trumpler type I,1,r or I,2,r.
M37 exists in the antipodal direction, opposite from the Galactic Center as seen from Earth, so is in one of the nearby outer arms. Specifically it is still close enough to be in our own. Estimates of its age range from 347 million to 550 million years. It has 1,500 times the mass of the Sun and contains over 500 identified stars, with roughly 150 stars brighter than magnitude 12.5. M37 has at least a dozen red giants and its hottest surviving main sequence star is of stellar classification B9 V. The abundance of elements other than hydrogen and helium, what astronomers term metallicity, is similar to, if not slightly higher than, the abundance in the Sun. As of 2022, it contains only the third known planetary nebula associated with an open cluster.
At its estimated distance of around 4,500 light-years (1,400 parsecs) from Earth, the cluster's angular diameter of 24 arcminutes corresponds to a physical extent of about 20–25 ly (6.1–7.7 pc).This started out as a guiding test (had some issues the previous night) and turned into another open cluster project.
I have been trying to work on my stars. I cannot find the “look” that I like (and can’t even describe it). I end up with 10-20 different versions of what I would like the stars to look only to be completely confused in choosing which one I will go with.
I recently started imaging open clusters and I really enjoy them.
M37 is pretty unremarkable to me as far as open clusters go, but it is still quite pretty in it’s own right.
This is about a 60% crop on the original image just to frame the cluster better.
Also, I applies a 2x drizzle. My image scale is about 1.35, so not very over-sampled. But, the difference in drizzled vs. non-drizzled is huge to me because I really love to dive into the stars and check out all of the cool looking binary systems. The increased definition between drizzled and non-drizzled is quite a bit for the pixel-peeper.
This is a close crop of some tine stars just below the center of the cluster.
Thanks for looking and suggestions or comments are very welcome!
Jim
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