M39 - Open Star Cluster in Cygnus

[iksose7]

M39 is an open cluster made up of around 30-50 stars in the summer constellation of Cygnus the swan. It is located around 800 light years away (1 light year = 6 trillion miles) and is estimated to be around 300 million years old. These stars are very young and hot which is shown by their blue colour, compare these to our star which is 4.5 billion years old.

With the constellation Cygnus lying on the galactic plane, the cluster sits in front of millions of other solar masses that make up our Milky Way galaxy, and this is only a tiny portion of our night sky. 

The aim here was to use longer exposures to try and bring out some of the dust globules in the area which you dont see captured too often. I did pick up a little but sacrificed star size. Other than star reduction in Photoshop this was my first image processed entirely with the trial version of Pixinsight, a piece of dedicated astronomical image processing software.

Exposure Details:

85* 300 secs, 36* 600 secs, ISO 800, calibration frames, 805mm

Total Exposure: 13 hours

Scope: Altair Astro 115EDT

Camera: Canon 1100D

Mount: NEQ6

Callum

[tingting44]

I do like m39, great job mate

[iksose7]

Thanks Martin i used to find clusters a bit boring, its always nice when theres something extra to pick up in the FOV.

Callum