ASTRO: NGC 7044

NGC 7044 is an open cluster in Cygnus not far from the famous North
American Nebula. It is in the Herschel 400 object list. I couldn't
find any authoritative distance for the cluster. WEBDA puts its
distance as a bit over 10,000 light-years. One paper puts the age of
the cluster as 1.04 to 1.2 billion years. It's lack of massive blue
stars would support this age determination. Open clusters tend to be
ripped apart by tidal forces before they get this old. This one
apparently has sufficient mass to avoid being ripped to pieces.
http://cds.aanda.org/index.php?Itemi...6A...414..163S

Located in the Milky Way it is seen against a dense star field. Being
near the North American and Pelican Nebula complex there is some faint H
alpha across the image. It was pretty featureless and reduced contrast
to the cluster. I processed the image to ignore this background as it
added nothing but a noisy faint red glow. With a lot more time and
filtered H alpha data it might work to show it. I decided it was better
if suppressed in my limited exposure time image.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick
--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".

Beautiful cluster Rick.
In spite of your long focal length there is enough space around the cluster
to make it stand out well.

Stefan

"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
.com...
NGC 7044 is an open cluster in Cygnus not far from the famous North
American Nebula. It is in the Herschel 400 object list. I couldn't
find any authoritative distance for the cluster. WEBDA puts its
distance as a bit over 10,000 light-years. One paper puts the age of
the cluster as 1.04 to 1.2 billion years. It's lack of massive blue
stars would support this age determination. Open clusters tend to be
ripped apart by tidal forces before they get this old. This one
apparently has sufficient mass to avoid being ripped to pieces.
http://cds.aanda.org/index.php?Itemi...6A...414..163S

Located in the Milky Way it is seen against a dense star field. Being
near the North American and Pelican Nebula complex there is some faint H
alpha across the image. It was pretty featureless and reduced contrast
to the cluster. I processed the image to ignore this background as it
added nothing but a noisy faint red glow. With a lot more time and
filtered H alpha data it might work to show it. I decided it was better
if suppressed in my limited exposure time image.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick
--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".