These are our observations in Cancer

• January's Galaxy of the Month

  Happy New Year.

  Last night I made this sketch of the NGC 2563 group in Cancer following Owen naming it his Galaxy of the Month. I hadn't observed this group before and all though it wasn't the best night to do so I grabbed the opportunity  having been so frustrated over the holiday by my skies.

  

  I don't feel that I would have pulled out much more detail in the two brighter galaxies even if it hadn't been hazy and the Moon wasn't at 84%, however I would have seen some more of the fainter surrounding galaxies which always enchant me on the edge of visibility.

  

  Usual equipment: 505mm Newt with a Watec 120N+ video camera set to a 15 second integrated exposure and sketched black-on-white from the monochrome CRT monitor.

  Dale Holt - 7 January 2020

• Winter Open Clusters

  Recent months have given us the worst run of observing weather I can remember and during this time I've been using what clear spells we've had to do some telescope testing. This has meant that I've been out grabbing a few test images when conditions would otherwise have kept me indoors. So looking back, I can now see that some of these test images are quite presentable so I thought I'd share them with you. So these are a small collection of Winter open clusters looking south from my observatory in Cambridge.

  Messier 46, NGC 2437 and the planetary nebula NGC 2438 in Puppis

  M46 is one of the richest open clusters with over 500 stars, over 180 of them brighter than magnitude 13 and the brightest being around magnitude 9. M46 is around 4480 light years away. There are a few red giant stars indicating a cluster age of around 500 million years. The planetary nebula NGC 2438 lies in the northern region of M46 and it is still debated whether it is part of M46 or is a foreground object. M46 was imaged on 10 February 2018.

  

  Messier 50, NGC 2323 in Monoceros

  M50 is a much sparser open cluster with around 100 stars at 2900 light years distant. Noteworthy is the magnitude 7.8 red giant star to the south of the cluster and the double stars on the northeast edge. M50 was imaged on 24 February 2018.

  

  Messier 67, NGC 2662 in Cancer

  M67 is 3000 light years away, is one of the oldest open clusters known and is thought to be 3.7 billion years old, almost the age of the Solar System. It contains highly evolved stars, including around 20 red giant stars. M67 was imaged on 8 March 2018.

  

  Messier 44, NGC 2632 in Cancer, Praesepe or The Beehive Cluster

  This image is of the central region of M44, the field of view was too small to capture the whole cluster. At just 610 light years distant, M44 is one of the nearest open clusters. It contains over 200 stars with the brightest at magnitude 6.8 and over 20 brighter than magnitude 8. The cluster contains a large number of double and triple stars and over 100 variable stars. Despite the short exposures, there are several faint galaxies visible in the image. M44 was imaged on 8 March 2018.

  

  Image Details

  • Telescope: 8" Ritchey-Chretien plus 0.7X reducer at F/5.3
  • Camera: QSI 583 plus Astrodon RGB filters and a Lodestar guide camera

  All images are typically six subs of each RGB colour and of two or three minutes exposure each.

  David Davies - (11 April 2018). To see more of David's work please visit his Flickr Photostream.

• Observations of the NGC 2749 Group

  Object

  NGC 2749

  Constellation

  Taurus

  Location

  Suffolk

  Date and Time

  18/1/2015 22:00–23:00

  Instrument

  500mm Dobsonian

  Eyepiece

  8mm Televue Ethos (x294)

  Conditions

  SEEING(1-5) 3, NELM 5.6 at zenith, 5.4 at 30 degrees.

  

  Notes

  Easy to locate NGC 2749, hint of a core. Various E/Ps used (21,13,8 ethos). 2749 picked up in all E/Ps. Did not locate 2747 or 2745. 2752 and 2744 needed AV2. 2744 was a poorly defined patch of fuzz. 2752 was elliptical. 2751 needed AV 4 (not sketched) even to gain the merest hint of it, lying near to star GSC1404-1560. A difficult challenge under what was quite good skies.

  Mike Wood - (18 January 2015)