Last night I had some clear sky and I didn't feel like Imaging Nebula and I didn't feel like switching filters, so I stayed with the L-Pro. I had a hard time trying to decide what to image, so I settled on Stars or Clusters and for now clusters won out.
Star clusters Open and Globular, I find interesting, they are important in stellar evolution and the structure of our galaxy, I do wish I had the equipment to image them better even learn how to study them.
______________________________________________________________
NGC 457 (also designated
Caldwell 13, and known as the
Dragonfly Cluster,
E.T. Cluster,
Owl Cluster,
Kachina Doll Cluster or
Phi Cassiopeiae Cluster)
[2] is an
open star cluster in the
constellationCassiopeia.It was discovered by
William Herschel on August 18, 1780, with a 6.2 inch reflector telescope, and catalogued as VII 42.
[3]It is an easy target for amateur astronomers, and can be seen even with small telescopes in light-polluted skies.It lies over 7,900
light years away from the
Sun. It has an estimated age of 21 million years.
[1] The cluster is sometimes referred by
amateur astronomers as the
Owl Cluster[4] or the
E.T. Cluster (due to its resemblance to the movie character). Two bright stars
Phi Cassiopeiae (magnitude 5 and spectral type F0) and HD 7902 (magnitude 7) can be imagined as eyes. It is not yet clear if Phi Cassiopeiae is a member of the cluster, and if it is, then it would be one of the brightest stars known, surpassing
Rigelin luminosity. For comparison, the Sun at the same distance as Phi Cassiopeiae would shine at just 17.3 magnitude. The next brightest star is the
red supergiantvariable star V466 Cassiopeiae. The cluster features a rich field of about 150 stars of magnitude 9-13. About 60 stars have been identified as true members of the cluster.
- Frinchaboy, Peter M.; et al. (2008). "Open Clusters as Galactic Disk Tracers. I. Project Motivation, Cluster Membership, and Bulk Three-Dimensional Kinematics". The Astronomical Journal. 136 (1): 118–145. arXiv:0804.4630. Bibcode:2008AJ....136..118F. doi:10.1088/0004-6256/136/1/118. S2CID16641439. See table I, p. 12.
- "The Dragonfly Cluster (Open Cluster)". Retrieved 2020-10-28.
- "NGC 457, Owl Cluster, E.T. | Deep⋆Sky Corner". www.deepskycorner.ch. Retrieved 2022-05-28.
- "NGC 457". Astronomy Magazine. Retrieved 2020-10-13.
@information from Wikipedia
Comments