These are our observations in Cassiopeia

• NGC 7789 (Caroline's Rose) in Cassiopeia

  NGC 7789, Caroline's Rose, can be found in Cassiopeia among the rich starfields of the Milky Way. It lies about 8,000 light-years away and is one of the oldest open clusters known. It was discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel and was catalogued by brother William.

  The cluster looks like a flower in small telescopes, created by the cluster's nestled complex of stars and voids. It is estimated to be 1.6 billion years old, and many stars have evolved from the main sequence into red giants, thus giving the somewhat yellow cast.

  

  I captured the data in late September 2019 using one hour each of RGB data in five-minute subs. I processed the data in PixInsight and used the photometric colour calibration tool to fix the colours of the stars.

  Image Details

  • Telescope: APM 107 refractor
  • Camera: QSI 583 with a Lodestar as off-axis guider
  • Mount: Skywatcher EQ8

  David Davies - (20 October 2019).

• NGC457 in Cassiopeia

  NGC 457 is the brightest open cluster in Cassiopeia and one of the finest objects of its type in the northern sky.

  At magnitude +6.4, it's just beyond naked-eye visibility but I viewed it visually last weekend through my 107mm APO and I was struck by its beauty. The eyes of the Owl - or ET- are formed by the bright double star Psi Cassiopeia and are not part of the cluster itself, but are older foreground stars and are yellow-white in colour. The 10th-12th magnitude stars of the cluster, proper, are blue-white and arranged in prominent lines and curves lines and resemble the body and wings of an Owl, hence the popular name "the Owl Cluster".

  I really enjoyed the view through the telescope and appreciated the tiny, bright points of light making up the body and wings of the Owl. The experience confirmed to me that an image is only a representation of the visual view; you might make a visual observer of me yet.

  I have also enjoyed inspecting this image of NGC 457, especially the contrast between the blue-white and yellow-white stars in the cluster.

  

  Under the left wing of the Owl is the striking magnitude 8.7 red star, HD 236697, with colour index 2.1. Under the right wing, we find another, fainter deep red star.

  The lower part of the image is sprinkled with very faint galaxies, which are reddened in colour by the intervening dust of our Milky Way galaxy.

  This RGB image was captured on 26, 27 and 28 November with 20 x two-minute subs per colour. It is presented North down to give an upright Owl.

  I've also attached an inverted greyscale image of the region in the lower part of the image for galaxy hunters.

  

  Image Details

  • Telescope: 8" Ritchey-Chretien with an Astrophysics CCDT67 reducer.
  • Camera: QSI 583 plus Astrodon filters

  The main image is 30 minutes each of RGB in two-minute subs.

  David Davies - (13 December 2017).

• STF 163 in Cassiopeia

  

  Roberto Chiericoni (13 November 2017)

• The Bubble Nebula (NGC7635) in Cassiopeia

  David's Notes.

  The Bubble Nebula in Cassiopeia, AKA Caldwell 11, is a favourite object for visual observers and imagers. The 'bubble' is about 10 light years across and some 11,000 light years away. The bubble has been created by a fierce stellar wind from a hot, young and massive central star. The star, SAO 20575, is thought to have a mass of 10 - 20 solar masses.

  

  Image Details

  I have been gathering data on the Bubble Nebula as a narrow band project for the past two months and have acquired some five hours of H-alpha, six hours of OIII and nine hours of SII. The SII signal is particularly faint. I then gathered a further 30 minutes each of RGB data to colour the stars.

  I'm still processing this data and keep returning to it to see what further can be done, but since the results thus far are quite attractive, I thought I'd share them with you on this Christmas Eve (which he did, I'm just a bit slow sharing it with all of you - James).

  I've constructed a 'super luminance' image from the sum of the narrow band images and applied it to the RGB image to produce the LRGB image, above. The narrow band image is presented in the Hubble palette, but I have yet to substitute the RGB star data to correctly colour the stars.

  

  Equipment

  Telescope

  8-inch Ritchey Chretien at f/8.

  Camera

  QSI 583 plus Astrodon RGB filters and Lodestar guider.

  Mount

  Modified Skywatcher NEQ6

  Software

  Deep Sky Stacker, Pixinsight and Photoshop

  David Davies - (24 December 2016).

  For more images from David please visit his Flickr Photostream.

• Iota Cas in a big scope

  November 1st saw me out observing with the Dob and whilst the 20” Dob would not be my normal choice for double star observing I could not resist pointing it at iota Cas.

  Wow what a sight in a large scope. At first I could not easily see component C but a fine tune of the collimation revealed it clearly separated. Then to my surprise there was component B nestling in the glare of the primary star.

  

  The conditions and perfect collimation allowed me to up the power to x181 – well worth it. No colour was detected. The plus side of using the big scope is not only the sparkling sight but adjacent mag 13 and 14 stars are picked up as well.

  Mike Wood - 3 November 2016

• Abell 84 in Cassiopeia

  Image courtesy of Mike O'Brien.

  Image Details

  70 minutes in Hydrogen Alpha composed of 7 x 10 minute lights.

  Equipment

  Telescope

  12" Skywatcher PDS

  Camera

  Atik 314L+ mono

  Mount

  Skywatcher AZEQ6GT

  Guiding

  Starlight express mini USB filter wheel with built–in off axis guide prism and Orion G3 camera

  Mike O'Brien - (24 October 2016).

• NGC 281: the Pacman Nebula

  Image Courtesy of Paul A Brierley, East Cheshire, UK. Please click on the image for the high resolution version.

  I hope you are all enjoying this pre equinox sunshine.

  When the skies where I live, in East Cheshire, finally cleared least night. I was able to take 15 minute exposures of the "Pacman nebula" that is currently visible high in the Autumn sky near the star Schedar, Alpha Cassiopeiae.

  I used the usual equipment. And took 1¾ hours of image data, all 15 minutes through a Baader 7nm Ha filter.

  The images were stacked in DSS and post-processed in Startools and CS2. CCD and mount control via SGPro and PHD 1.