Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Perseus (Per)  ·  Contains:  NGC 869  ·  NGC 884  ·  The star 7Per  ·  chi Persei Cluster  ·  h Persei Cluster
C14 The Double Cluster, Joe Niemeyer
C14 The Double Cluster
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C14 The Double Cluster

C14 The Double Cluster, Joe Niemeyer
C14 The Double Cluster
Powered byPixInsight

C14 The Double Cluster

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This is my image of the Double Cluster (also known as Caldwell 14) which consists of the open star clusters NGC 884 (on the left) and NGC 869 (on the right). On any clear dark night you can find them near Cassiopeia in the constellation Perseus at a distance of 7,500 light years from Earth. I think they are simply awesome to observe in the telescope due to the color and density of the stars. The clusters consist of relatively young stars (about 12.8 million years old) including more than 300 blue-white super-giant stars in each cluster. And NGC 884 includes five prominent red supergiant stars. The Double Cluster was cataloged by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus in 130 BC and formally recognized as two distinct clusters by William Herschel in the early 19th century.

This image is a stack of forty 30-second ISO 2000 exposures at 1645mm FL, calibrated with 20 flat frames, 10 dark frames, and 10 bias frames, and then post-processed in Photoshop.

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C14 The Double Cluster, Joe Niemeyer