Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Major (UMa)  ·  Contains:  M 40  ·  PGC 2572162  ·  PGC 2572871  ·  PGC 2576158  ·  PGC 2576162  ·  PGC 2576239  ·  PGC 39934
Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M40 (Winnecke 4) RGB - 15 April 2020, Geof Lewis
Powered byPixInsight

M40 (Winnecke 4) RGB - 15 April 2020

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M40 (Winnecke 4) RGB - 15 April 2020, Geof Lewis
Powered byPixInsight

M40 (Winnecke 4) RGB - 15 April 2020

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

This is possibly the most bizarre of Charles Messier's list of 'it's not a comet' targets, though to be fair to him, in 1764 he was searching for a nebula that had been reported in the area by Johannes Hevelius, of which nothing has ever been found. What Messier found was an optical double, which I've only imaged as I need it for my personal Messier collection. It was rediscovered by Friedrich August Theodor Winnecke in 1863, hence the alternative designation of Winnecke 4. The star field is so boring that for the first time ever I used Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools to add artificial diffraction spikes....

Comments

Sky plot

Sky plot

Histogram

M40 (Winnecke 4) RGB - 15 April 2020, Geof Lewis