A Space & astronomy forum. SpaceBanter.com

Go Back   Home » SpaceBanter.com forum » Others » Astro Pictures
Site Map Home Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

Berkeley 71 An Open Star Cluster



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old March 4th 17, 05:12 PM
WA0CKY WA0CKY is offline
Senior Member
 
First recorded activity by SpaceBanter: Feb 2008
Posts: 689
Default Berkeley 71 An Open Star Cluster

Berkeley 71 is an open star cluster in Auriga about 1.2 degrees southwest of M36. It is listed at WEBDA as being about 12,700 light-years distant and rather old for an open cluster at 631,000 years. Being in the winter Milky Way you might suspect there's some reddening from galactic dust. You'd be right. It is listed at 0.88 magnitudes of reddening. The combination of its age and reddening explains the unusual lack of blue stars and the rather large number of red stars seen in the cluster. Most O and B blue stars have lived their lives and are long gone from the scene being just very faint white dwarfs lost in the distance and reddening. The reddening then removed even more blue light giving the cluster its rather odd color range.

Again I was plagued with clouds. One luminance frame was lost to them. Since I was sleeping while this was being taken and I didn't check on it until I just processed it I made do with just the three frames. Star clusters can survive such treatment very nicely as long as there's no related nebulosity to bring out. The field contains no objects with red shift data that I could find so no annotated image was prepared.

There is an asteroid near the top left edge. It runs from a moderately bright somewhat blue star with a fainter star just below it going southwest to a fainter pair of stars. It is (344168) 2000 YU139 at magnitude 17.7 per the minor planet center. A second asteroid (202957) 1999 RF103 at magnitude 19.0 per the minor planet center is seen even closer to the left edge just below the center. It isn't partly hidden behind a star as the first one is. This allows the gap in the trail caused by my rejecting one frame to be seen. The first part of the trail and gap is lost behind the stars for the other asteroid. Still the magnitude difference for these two appears only about 0.4 magnitudes not 1.1. Considering how poor the night it's hard to tell which if not both are in error.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=3x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version

Name:	BERKELEY71L3X10RGB2X10.JPG
Views:	455
Size:	463.9 KB
ID:	6529  Click image for larger version

Name:	BERKELEY71L3X10RGB2X10CROP125.JPG
Views:	173
Size:	158.9 KB
ID:	6530  
  #2  
Old March 14th 17, 11:03 PM
slilge slilge is offline
Senior Member
 
First recorded activity by SpaceBanter: Aug 2008
Posts: 151
Default

Rick,

that's a very nice cluster considering it doesn't have an NGC or IC number.
Actually "Berkeley" usually reminds me of the irish set dancing I do because we had two Berkeley students visiting our dancing for some time. One of them will move to Berlin in summer because she doesn't want to be ruled by twitter :-(

Stefan
 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Berkeley 29 An Old Open Cluster WA0CKY Astro Pictures 0 April 6th 16 07:08 AM
ASTRO: Open Star Cluster M-35 George Normandin[_1_] Astro Pictures 7 March 29th 08 01:19 PM
ASTRO: M-50, Open Star Cluster in Monoceros George Normandin[_1_] Astro Pictures 0 March 28th 08 02:58 AM
M-47, Open Star Cluster in Puppis; plus star clusters NGC 2423 and NGC 2425 George Normandin[_1_] Astro Pictures 3 March 4th 08 07:25 PM
ASTRO: M-26, Open Star Cluster in Scutum George Normandin[_1_] Astro Pictures 2 November 12th 07 02:49 AM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 02:26 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 SpaceBanter.com.
The comments are property of their posters.