On Tue, 11 Apr 2017 19:30:39 +0100, WA0CKY
wrote:


Berkeley 30 is a rarely imaged open star cluster in Monoceros. WEBDA
puts it at a distance of about 15,600 light-years. They give an age of
300 million years with 0.5 magnitudes of reddening due to dust between
us and the cluster. It seems to have a lot of red giant stars. Seems
many of its massive stars are about the same mass so entering the red
giant stage at about the same time. Other sources seem to disagree. I
find distance estimates of 7600 light years and an age of 900 million
years in one paper for instance. This shows the difficulty of studying
these objects.

There are quite a few galaxies in the image if you look very closely,
three on the east edge of the main part of the cluster for example.
None however have any redshift or other distance data so I've not
prepared an annotated image. I'll let those interested hunt up these
very small faint fuzzies.

Thank you.
I see four quite bright stars in a line just to the left (east?) of
the cluster. I'm assuming those are nearby objects?
Do they have names and histories and exoplanets?
Are they related (yes, I do know that's unlikely as two are very blue
and two orangish but they could be a co-moving group)?

Thanks for all the lovely images,
Mand.



14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick