Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Cassiopeia (Cas)  ·  Contains:  HD236783  ·  HD9311  ·  HD9365  ·  M 103  ·  NGC 581
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M 103 GIF - Happy Holidays!, James E.
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M 103 GIF - Happy Holidays!

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
M 103 GIF - Happy Holidays!, James E.
Powered byPixInsight

M 103 GIF - Happy Holidays!

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Description

A Christmas tree-shaped open cluster that fits perfectly with the holiday season.  A final heavily cropped image was used to create additional images with certain star chains clone stamped in PixInsight and then combined in the program PIPP (Planetary Imaging PreProcessor) to create a GIF of blinking "Christmas tree lights."  A non-blinking wider field image of M 103 is also shown in an included revision.

M 103 is an open cluster containing a few hundred mainly faint stars.  It was discovered in 1781 by Charles Messier's friend and collaborator Pierre Mechain.  It is about 8000-9500 light years away and is about 15 light years across.  In 1783, William Herschel observed M 103 and described the region as "14-16 pL (pretty large stars) and with great many eS (extremely small/faint stars)."  A bright foreground star shown at the "top" of M 103 - Struve 131 (HD9311) - is not a member of the cluster. 

Imaged on Nov 6, 2022.

Comments

Revisions

  • Final
    M 103 GIF - Happy Holidays!, James E.
    Original
  • M 103 GIF - Happy Holidays!, James E.
    C

Sky plot

Sky plot