Grasslands National Park, CA - First Official Light with TS-115

#GrasslandsNationalPark is one of Canada's dark sky preserve located in #Saskatchewan . This past labour day long weekend, I travelled to Grasslands National Park and stayed at Don's Place. Of the 4 nights, fortunately I was able to get 1 clear night which was used for #astrophotography .

The remoteness and isolation of the Grasslands National Park is fascinating and the miles long distances one can see is very scenic. On the way back we also visited a very remote Hutterite Colony. We found the people of that community to be very generous, honest and hard working and we were quite impressed. We bought from them loads of freshly grown vegetables without the use of dangerous chemicals. They were very generous and were very excited to welcome us as we were outsiders.

Here is a video of the entire trip and behind the scene #astrophotography work.

#NGC654 is an open star cluster in the constellation of #Cassiopeia . This image is the first official dark sky light with my #TS-115 Refractor and I am quite satisfied with the results and the way the colours came out. The reason I choose this image was because it was an easy target and also had a little bit of dark nebulosity which can be seen 10o clock from the centre of the image.

I must say that I am also very satisfied with the test of #ZWOASIAir. Polar alignment can be achieved of Professional Observatory level accuracy. Platesolving, Image acquisition is a breeze with the ASIAIR. #Astrophotography #Astronomy

Special Note : I am providing FREE uncalibrated RAW data to anyone who is interested in processing NGC 654. If you are interested you can download the data from this website :

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Ztyr82_uUmQeCsugikHmeQq6nxQIwpCn?usp=sharing

If you do plan to process, publish your work using the above data. I require that you MUST provide credit to me in the bottom left corner of the image "Data acquired by K. Singh".

The above data is provided out of courtesy to the astronomy and astrophotography community worldwide. I do not encourage remote acquisition, I do encourage self-data acquisition and visual astronomy equally.

NGC 654 is an open cluster in the constellation Cassiopeia. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1787. With apparent magnitude 6.5, it can be observed by binoculars.[3] It is located 2,5° northeast of the star Delta Cassiopeiae. In the same low power field can also be seen the open clusters NGC 663 and NGC 659. It surrounds a 7th magnitude yellowish star, an F5Ia supergiant, which is a possible member of the group.[4]

Map showing location of NGC 654

It is 2,400 parsec away. It is a very young cluster, with age approximately 15 million years, but it can be as old as 40 million years, with a time spread of star formation of at least ∼20 Myr. The central region of the cluster shows less reddening than the rest of the cluster.[5] An explanation given is the fact that between the solar system and the cluster lie two dust layers, one at 200pc and one more at 1Kpc.[6] Behind the cluster is one more dust layer. The cluster has approx. 80 members. The earliest spectral type is around B0 and members of the cluster are also a few luminous stars, like HD 10494, F5Ia. Also, in the cluster have been found three Be stars.[7]

NGC 654 is assumed to form part of the stellar association Cassiopeia OB8, that is located in the Perseus arm of the Milky Way, along with the open clusters M103, NGC 663, NGC 659, and some supergiant stars scattered between them, all of them having similar ages and distances.[8][9]

(citation : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_654)