November 3, 2010

M37 (10-29-2010)

This open cluster of stars is 4,150+-550 light years away in the constellation Auriga. It thus lies in the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy roughly looking out away from the galaxy's center. This image is 17x300" with the AT8RC (w/0.8x ff/fr, for a focal length of about 1300mm) and the SXVF-H9C. Here is a smaller version:

2 comments:

RoryG said...

This is one of my favorite open clusters. I haven't managed to get a satisfactory image of it, though. Nice work here, especially with the colors. I love those thin diffraction spikes!

Polaris B said...

Thanks, Rory! One of my favorite, too. It looks in my scopes more like the smaller version posted than the larger, which is why I posted the smaller version. I like the low power view. About 67x in an 8" scope is pretty impressive.