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Berkeley clusters in Monoceros

Martin Meredith

By Martin Meredith
in EEVA - Reports

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Martin Meredith

Martin Meredith

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First session of 2020! Due to the appearance of high cloud I decided to observe open clusters rather than fainter objects tonight. I've always enjoyed looking at members of the Berkeley catalogue of open clusters. These are some of the oldest clusters known. They are generally quite compact but can be rich and with a warm red-yellow hue (presumably due to distance).

There are 12 Berkeley open clusters in Monoceros and my plan was to observe and compare them all, but the cold got the better of me and I only managed to observe 10 and a half (the latter being a little too low to get a successful image). Here they are in all their understated glory. Note that many are off centre. See if you can spot them -- they're not always very obvious.

I used 15s subs in all cases. These are all a mix of L R G B filters, live combined with Jocular at the scope using LAB colour space. All are snapshots at the tool with no offline processing. I may have oversaturated some of them. They were mainly in the range 25-35 deg above the horizon at the point of capture.

Thanks for looking

Martin

 

763865418_Berkeley2428Jan20_20_49_55.png.f7cc92033ea143bd37dc19533f62209c.png 

30556104_Berkeley2628Jan20_20_17_16.png.84c8f668777417bfcd6326c89137acc3.png

998557901_Berkeley2728Jan20_20_07_06.png.cd936b9229f1bff521929c861c9b4dfc.png

 

1732509026_Berkeley2828Jan20_20_33_47.png.e42b4e5d6a42f7b4d4807c541fd321e6.png

2081043442_Berkeley3028Jan20_20_26_28.png.96631befcec00893851bf7028a53f31b.png

90705961_Berkeley3128Jan20_19_45_35.png.fb33f8d439148e65377a3c60ea0c3ef9.png

1633185640_Berkeley3228Jan20_19_54_59.png.630db607e7743a0c2c22c5f87694165a.png

1805654981_Berkeley3428Jan20_20_41_00.png.fe50079bf11488d747d5f05abc9e2c4c.png

1209594899_Berkeley3728Jan20_20_57_38.png.202ae50bf67747bbc050dcfd46e55b1c.png

 

1333360548_Berkeley7728Jan20_21_11_02.png.f2fb71ea1bc07f4420f006e6a2ab68ce.png

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Martin Meredith

Martin Meredith

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Thanks Mike. I don't find some of them very easy to find even with EEVA techniques... I've just cross-compared with DSS2 and labelled mono inverted versions of these images, including Berkeley 39 which I didn't include above for some reason (for this one and Berkeley 77 I was shooting thru the leaves of a bay tree...). They don't really need these long exposures. These are longish because I was collecting RGB too.

Prize for the most distant here goes to Berkeley 26 at over 41000 Lys (the 7th most distant cluster I can find), while the oldest is Berkeley 39 at nearly 8 billion years (the 8th oldest cluster I have data for).

There are 104 Berkeley OCs so feasible to check them all out. They're mainly high declination (the ones in Monoceros are some of the lowest). The lowest is Berkeley 75 in CMA at -23° 59 48.1. They're also fairly small with apparent diameters mainly under 10' (just 5 are larger, largest Berkeley 53 at 22'). All good for the small Lodestar sensor for my scope.

There are 18 in CAS so that might be the next place to observe.

Martin

1634194197_Berkeley2429Jan20_11_40_39.png.808b9a1e19c5df2542213be2e0ea0d8f.png

 

1987262549_Berkeley2629Jan20_11_45_39.png.7208407267d6f240a7ee136728c0310a.png

 

1850800962_Berkeley2729Jan20_11_49_30.png.e6390628cac0a4d6f836edd98ffb3357.png

 

506836025_Berkeley2829Jan20_11_51_37.png.5cfbb5348476a9932fb261d1d78fd151.png

 

2015274982_Berkeley3029Jan20_11_54_03.png.e322652c068b4688697bf51a5ad35169.png

2032003645_Berkeley3129Jan20_11_56_52.png.f2ba2433282c3ecbeda1be6911f44baa.png

1252741242_Berkeley3229Jan20_11_59_16.png.0de492660787ac82ca5e6c74ff22354c.png

The arrow points to an almost perfect circle of stars at the edge of the cluster which was very apparent when watching the subs coming in.

 

1490180162_Berkeley3429Jan20_12_03_22.png.e109f08c87cac9614d93ca6b7852ed3e.png

872681518_Berkeley3729Jan20_12_05_52.png.76de0b70b726c269b8643708ad86a5f6.png

98234266_Berkeley3929Jan20_12_10_24.png.04e934570435bb88a049d6504a54f78a.png

2135571108_Berkeley7729Jan20_12_13_33.png.a1b66b15102fd1bf5f7b1a82ccae152a.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Mike JW

Mike JW

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Excellent presentation Martin. I always enjoy a posting when an effort is made to give some extra information. Never quite see the point of "here is another picture of ????"

Must turn the Dob onto these guys sometime. Sometime last year I observed Berk 58, 4, 62, and 65 (faint fuzz), in Cass with the 15" Dob so I will be interested in what you are able to pick up. No records for the Monoceros Berkeley Clusters. Mike

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Martin Meredith

Martin Meredith

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On 29/01/2020 at 13:59, Mike JW said:

Excellent presentation Martin. I always enjoy a posting when an effort is made to give some extra information. Never quite see the point of "here is another picture of ????"

Must turn the Dob onto these guys sometime. Sometime last year I observed Berk 58, 4, 62, and 65 (faint fuzz), in Cass with the 15" Dob so I will be interested in what you are able to pick up. No records for the Monoceros Berkeley Clusters. Mike

Thanks Mike. I agree, it is always good to see some details of the objects themselves (as opposed to the kit used to observe them).

Before you turn the dob on to the Berkeleys, it is worth checking out the latest information on cluster parameters and existence in this Vizier table: https://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=J/A%2BA/618/A93 based on a 2018 article. There are 88 Berkeleys listed which I think suggests the rest were regarded as non-detected (and possibly not real?). Amongst those not listed that I show above is Berkeley 26, and looking at my inverted figure it is easy to see that this might not be more than a chance grouping. The table also gives updated membership numbers and distance estimates which I think can be considered as better estimates than the figures I quote on the plots. Generally, N is quite a bit higher.

Martin

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Martin Meredith

Martin Meredith

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At the risk of the title of this thread not quite representing its contents (these are no longer in MON), I've decided to post some additional Berkeleys here rather than generate a new thread for each session.

These are all in the Cepheus/Cassiopeia region from 2 nights ago. Forecast is good for tonight too so I may continue on this quest in spite of the bright moon. Each plot shows the most recent data I could find on age/distance/number of members. I'm querying age data on some of them as it seems very much at odds with the others, but it might be correct.

As you can see, the majority of these would be quite hard to spot! I'm very much relying on the GAIA data to help here. The Berkeleys are rather faint 

Martin

 

1594954584_Berkeley505Feb20_13_12_57.png.35954fd242cce2f170635f64f96b90ca.png

1542419592_Berkeley605Feb20_11_39_46.png.575403d169015e6b8b64d9aea001beb8.png

1799808050_Berkeley705Feb20_11_39_15.png.a2325ceaf84dd4b1e4755487d543a7d7.png

 

1011600637_Berkeley6005Feb20_11_38_04.png.e571ad714a09bd62a9a40e7630054578.png

396059825_Berkeley6205Feb20_11_43_59.png.d456e36d4f20b077e25a3927d0e04c43.png

 

1051597435_Berkeley9705Feb20_11_43_24.png.bb2a1ea1954d520e1f46f01b14f9deab.png

1454635138_Berkeley9905Feb20_11_46_28.png.c5e9619ef564872cf20a8a6dac9f631b.png

 

457968894_Berkeley10005Feb20_12_07_23.png.68eb1a16d77e1e33bad568cdce50e985.png

532077559_Berkeley10105Feb20_12_09_45.png.1d1dbbcee6a101af8bbce054074d63be.png

 

1386114697_Berkeley10205Feb20_12_05_34.png.ac0beaf22006b63038d863aa3239e5e5.png

 

 

1148244925_Berkeley10305Feb20_11_48_03.png.089a3c7246d50e6eae350a3a14c16466.png

970014596_Berkeley10405Feb20_12_13_30.png.fb5a9ad74aebbb19e1d7a59647c0143e.png

 

 

 

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Martin Meredith

Martin Meredith

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Thanks Mike, Michael & Rob. For me the almost the best bit is checking out to see what I can find about these clusters afterwards (even if it turns out their existence is questionable!).

Here are 10 more, including Berkeley 64 which some sources regard as non-existent but for which there is a candidate close by, as marked.

 

1512928745_Berkeley109Feb20_10_34_42.png.53fa2cff8b5c900983b59d92c98dab7e.png1184927203_Berkeley209Feb20_10_34_24.png.1f79af54adfcbc71f97bf236cd222004.png1259544789_Berkeley409Feb20_10_34_06.png.e7ab0626ebb965dff1ea1877b5888ed8.png354678856_Berkeley809Feb20_10_33_40.png.703b96017bd8ad8b19c819dbefe635fb.png1980651011_Berkeley5809Feb20_10_33_20.png.3f138fbe40c3f10b00732bea12a16ee5.png1434989713_Berkeley6109Feb20_10_32_58.png.40eea4babcafd0445e1bd4aafdee5867.png1702174259_Berkeley6309Feb20_10_32_36.png.5f32a9fae1b7c69146b92f9e78073750.png920384828_Berkeley6409Feb20_10_32_18.png.bcc73d5c100234a47a4fe7a00d4a9b4e.png1370357017_Berkeley6509Feb20_10_31_23.png.4e4388784eb7d0e548d6d322d8f18868.png

242699749_Berkeley6609Feb20_11_29_11.png.3a972c883135ff0c1ffbad039681e894.png

 

 

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