Cloudy season continues, so it's time to release another image from the Cassiopeia Series shot during September and October. This was a discovery project--pointing and shooting the camera just to see what I could reveal around each of the five brightest stars in the constellation. The RedCat + Canon combo I shoot with has a field of approximately 5˚x3˚ degrees. This means that most of the Cassiopeian objects I see on Astrobin by other photographers are only tiny blurs, lost in a large field.
Delta Cas (δ Cas, Ruchbah) is a subgiant A5IV class star, sporting a pale bluish tint. It is reported to be an eclipsing binary system, but I can't see it with my scope. Perhaps one of you will undertake the study of this star. Let me know what you find.
Chi Cas (χ Cas) is a red giant, type G9IIIb.
Phi Cas (φ Cas), in the Owl Cluster, is a multiple star system. Two of the stars are blue supergiants and are visible in this image.
The region around Delta Cas is very interesting and replete with objects that those of you with better scopes can image. From the overly-stretched, blown-out original version of this image you can only see hints of all the beautiful images that could be had. The revision, of course, which focuses on stars, wipes out those subtleties that were stretched into existence by my old workflow.
In the revision I added a few star diffractions for a little extra visual interest, something I normally wouldn't do, but the spirit moved me on this occasion.
These two images together produce a pair that allows (1) deeper exploration of the region, and (2) a somewhat interesting star field, with some notable clusters. So there you have it. I hope you get something from looking at this.
Other published images in the series:
Alpha Cas Beta Cas Gamma Cas Epsilon Cas 
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