M46, The 'Little Sister' Cluster, RGB (AnaTa)

Celestial hemisphere: Southern · Constellation: Puppis (Pup) · Contains: 140 Pup · HD61465 · HD61485 · HD61669 · HD61819 · HD62000 · HD62146 · HD62289 · HD62728 · M 46 · NGC 2437 · NGC 2438 · PK231+04.1 · PK231+04.2 · The star 140 Pup

Image of the day 11/05/2024

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M46, The 'Little Sister' Cluster, RGB

Revision title: Main image

Image of the day 11/05/2024

Powered byPixInsight

M46, The 'Little Sister' Cluster, RGB

Revision title: Main image

M46, the Little Sister Cluster is a large (24'), bright (6 Mag) and dense open cluster in the constellation of Puppis. M46 is at a distance of about 5,300 ly, 38 ly across and is old (250 million years) for open cluster. M46 has at least 500 stars. The PN NGC 2438 appears to lie within the cluster, but it is most likely unrelated since it does not share the cluster's radial velocity. On the other hand, Calabash Nebula (PK231) shares the radial velocity and proper motion of M46, and is at the same distance, so is a bona fide member of the open cluster.
This is a second time photographing of M46. Original, which is still on AstroBin site, was taken from backyard in October 2022 with the Vixen 103 refractor. This image has high SNR of 250.

Processing:
Dynamic Crop for R, G, B
GraXpert for all frames. It helped.
RGB combine.
DBE for RGB
Color calibration for RGB was done using SPCC
Blur and Noise XT for RGB.
Standard linear HT stretching for RGB
Noise XT and then HT stretch again for RGB
Lum mask
Curves for slight saturation of RGB
Yellow and Blue masks were used to saturate and slightly enhance red-yellow and white-blue stars, respectively.
Annotation is on the panel A.
The main image is the panel B

Original
Final
B

B

Title: Main image

Uploaded: ...

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
PixInsight job	VLBTPUXVPOMPM5CDK6MR5R02I7V71XEV
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	07h41m45s.48
RA (top/left)	07h44m47s.97
RA (top/right)	07h38m39s.00
RA (bottom/right)	07h38m40s.98
RA (bottom/left)	07h44m53s.25

Dec (center)	-14°48′57″.8
Dec (top/left)	-14°03′39″.5
Dec (top/right)	-14°04′35″.8
Dec (bottom/right)	-15°34′04″.2
Dec (bottom/left)	-15°33′08″.3

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Image of the day 11/05/2024

M46, The 'Little Sister' Cluster, RGB

Revision title: Main image

Image of the day 11/05/2024

M46, The 'Little Sister' Cluster, RGB

Revision title: Main image

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Image of the day 11/05/2024

M46, The 'Little Sister' Cluster, RGB

Revision title: Main image

Image of the day 11/05/2024

M46, The 'Little Sister' Cluster, RGB

Revision title: Main image

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