Collinder 140 - the "Tuft" in the Tail of Canis Major (BrettWaller)

Collinder 140 - the "Tuft" in the Tail of Canis Major

Collinder 140 is a very large open cluster, about 42' in diameter and roughly 1.5 times the size of the moon. It is visible as the "tuft" in the tail of the dog, Canis Major, with an integrated visual magnitude of 3.5. The stem of the Y-shaped asterism of four stars of fifth and sixth magnitude protrudes out of the cluster to the northeast, and brightest star is magnitude 5.36. The cluster consists of 30 members and is classified as a Trumpler Type III 3 p open cluster. Its blueist main sequence stars are spectral class B3 which yield an estimated age of 22 million years. The brightest yellow star is spectral Class G8.

Cr 140 lies at a distance of 1,226 light years and is receding from Earth ay 18 kilometers per second. The density of the stars in the cluster is approximately twice that of stars near the Sun.

The center of the "Y" is the double star Dunlap 47, with yellow and blue components of magnitudes 5.6 and 7.6, respectively, separated by 99 " in Position Angle 342. In fact, these two "stars" are themselves double stars, not resolved at this plate scale. The primary yellowish component AB has the double-star designation DAW 129 with a close companion of magnitude 9.7, with a separation of 2.1" at Position Angle 311. The secondary bluish component CD has a faint magnitude 10.8 companion, with a separation of 0.9" in Position Angle 205.

The image was acquired under a waxing gibbous moon as an experiment to see if it was possible to obtain useful data under such conditions.

Original
Final
B

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Image of the day
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Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
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Extremely wide field
Star trails
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	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
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Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

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Status	Basic pending
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	9506128
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

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