Ngc 2192

NGC 2192 is a rather tight but somewhat sparse open cluster in Auriga about 8,000 light-years distant with a Trumpler classification of III1p meaning it has no concentration of stars toward the center, the stars are evenly bright and it contains less than 50_stars. But it fit my field and is in the second Herschel 400 list of objects which my system is programmed to grab a frame or two on when nothing better is available (usually when waiting for something better to move into my imaging window. The luminance was taken one night and the color data taken over two other nights. I only managed one frame of each color but since there were no satellites I decided to end it last November. William Herschel found it on December 31, 1788. Apparently he wasn't out boozing up New Year's Eve. Maybe that wasn't done in England in 1788.

The image contains two asteroids. Transparency wasn't good the night I got the luminance so they aren't as bright as normal for their magnitude and there's no color for them since that was taken on different nights.

I measure the diameter of the cluster at about 7.5 minutes but it's hard to tell where the cluster ends and field stars begin. Most catalogs give it a diameter of 5 minutes. If it is 5 minutes then the cluster is about 11.6 light-years across. If my 7.5 minutes is more correct then the diameter is 17.4 light-years. WEBDA gives an age for the cluster of just under 2 million years. That's not enough time for any blue stars to have evolved to red giants. Red dwarf's would be too faint so I assume the orange stars in the cluster are most likely not true members of the cluster. Most sources show it as virtually free of reddening from intervening dust.

There is obviously lots of dust blocking distant galaxies from being seen. Only one is obvious and even that one is hard to see hiding behind a somewhat orange star just beyond the southwest edge of the cluster. NED doesn't show it at all as not even the 2MASS picked it up. It and the two asteroid are annotated in the cropped image which is at 1.5" per pixel. It is just noted as G? as I can't even verify it is a galaxy though I can't imagine it being anything else. I didn't note the cluster as that was rather obvious.

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

Attached images at 1.5" per pixel rather than my usual 1" per pixel as seeing and transparency were very limiting this night.

Rick