2017-12-28 - NGC 2287 - M41 Star custer

[N3ptune]

Hello! this is an interesting target suggestion from @Mak the Night the NGC 2287 just bellow Sirius. And it was actually my first short observation of it (-20 Celcius outside.)

For me, this was a striking cluster because it has many orange stars, which is not common in many cluster (that I know). The cluster was under the worst light pollution direction, so I hope to be able to look at it from a better spot eventually, for it the show even more stars.

200 x 1000 Newtonian, 25mm Xcel LX eyepiece,

Wiki: The cluster itself covers an area around the size of the full moon. It contains about 100 stars including several red giants, the brightest being a spectral type K3 giant of apparent magnitude 6.3 near the cluster's center, and a number of white dwarfs.

Very nice cluster! thanks.

[Mak the Night]

M41 aka the Little Beehive is one of my favourites. I've even seen it with a 90mm Mak and a 23mm SvBony Aspheric/Bushnell 25mm Kellner with a 0.5x reducer. 

 

Nice sketch N3ptune.

[mariosi]

Wonderful result N3p! 

Thank you for sharing 

Marios

[N3ptune]

Thanks @mariosi and @Mak the Nightit was fun to do also.

Nice eyepieces with reducers Mak, they are major trouble saver for you has I understand. I think too the object is good with low power and next time I want to look at it with my biggest eyepiece (which was in the house at the time of that observation)

--> But There is always a next time in astronomy.

Has I see in your image, there was at least 1 large star with a blue hue along almost 3  or 4 orange stars including the bright red giant in the middle. That's a 2 for 1 inside the same Little Beehive Cluster. (The largest star, bottom left of your image, I remember clearly it was bluish, very nice star..

Thanks to you for that great suggestion again!

N3ptune.

 

[Mak the Night]

The Little Beehive for me looks more like in your sketch than in the SN7 screenshot. Conditions are important with observing it, it is quite colourful though and it contains a large visible Red Giant.

The eyepiece reducer combinations were experimental to see how wide an exit pupil I could get on a small Mak.

A 25mm BST StarGazer and 19mm TV Panoptic fared well although I abandoned the 102mm Mak for low power for my ST80. I have an ES too.

Not quite as big as yours though lol.

The Bushnell Kellner is lighter on my 90mm Orion StarMax on a tabletop Dob' mount. I chose this as the SvBony Kellner worked well and (with the reducer) gave 45͒ FOV for about one arc degree, forty eight minutes TFOV.

The Bushnell is a normal Kellner as far as I can ascertain as its eye lens is concave. So it's a simple design even including the reducer and minimises the amount of glass.

It vignettes very slightly but the FOV is at least 50͒. This gives me 25x for targets like the Little Beehive with a 3.6mm exit pupil on the little Mak. This is an ideal magnification and field of view for M41.

 

[N3ptune]

@Mak the Night

It seems like you found the best of every world with your Mak and ST80 telescopes, with the use of these reducers and some inexpensive eyepieces in some case. You push the limits of everything   Have you tried the 14mm 82 degrees on that cluster and can you put a reducer on that one too?

The Little Beehive for me looks more like in your sketch than in the SN7 screenshot. Conditions are important with observing it, it is quite colourful though and it contains a large visible Red Giant.

Thanks! it's good news if my sketch is better then the SN7 I am happy to read that really. It's a very big and beautiful cluster, I think 25x should be a good power to use on it.

[Mak the Night]

1 hour ago, N3ptune said:

@Mak the Night

It seems like you found the best of every world with your Mak and ST80 telescopes, with the use of these reducers and some inexpensive eyepieces in some case. You push the limits of everything   Have you tried the 14mm 82 degrees on that cluster and can you put a reducer on that one too?

The Little Beehive for me looks more like in your sketch than in the SN7 screenshot. Conditions are important with observing it, it is quite colourful though and it contains a large visible Red Giant.

Thanks! it's good news if my sketch is better then the SN7 I am happy to read that really. It's a very big and beautiful cluster, I think 25x should be a good power to use on it.

Well, it's what's convenient to set up really that determines which scope/set up I use. I bought the 14mm ES specifically for the ST80 with a 1.25" diagonal, there's no need to put a reducer on it. I doubt a reducer would work anyway and would seriously vignette.

Sometimes boosting the magnification to between 30x to 40x on the Little Beehive can show more stars, especially if the transparency isn't good. The SN7 shot of it was probably taken by a huge aperture, your sketch is much more like what I can see lol.