M35 and NGC 2158

[glennbech]

The moon is pretty dominant at the moment, so I thought I'd try to grab some open clusters. I ran into some equipment trouble (again.. this time the shutter cable, for my canon 10D, seems to be broken..). I swapped for my non-modified 400D and managed to get 2x180 seconds of M35 & NGC 2158 before they went out of sight.

NGC 2158 is a lot fainter than I thought, maybe I'll try with some longer subs later.

This is also my first post in a while. My motivation has been a trip down the drain due to faulty equipment (dsusb gone bad), bad weather and setup time. I have now reduced setup time by a lot, and I hope for some good weather now ;-)

I am pretty happy with the stars around the edges. I have not cropped the image, and it's a good test of the baader MPCC.

Scope is Skywatcher explorer 200 on a heq5 pro. Guided with Helios startravel 80 & opticstar guidecam. 3x180 seconds. No flats, and the background extraction process in pixinsight left a red band across the bottom of the image....

[barkis]

Such a nice open cluster M35, and ngc2158 stands out well too here. Some nice colour in the stars.

A fine image.

Ron.

[MikeD]

Nice work.

Mike.

[James]

That's a lovely shot Glenn, I do like those 'two for the price of one' targets!

James

[steppenwolf]

A lovely cluster image with good star colours too - very nice

[Kai]

Last week whilst down in darkest Devon im certain that we spotted M35 naked eye , through the Binos it looked very much like your image

[Psychobilly]

Welcome Back Glenn... it's been a few weeks ... have you thawed out yet...?

Cracking image by the way

Peter....

[661-pete]

Nice tight clusters there with good colour - pity you didn't get a chance at more subs, which I reckon could bring out more of 2158. And in moonlight too! What ISO were you at?

Reminds me - I too had a go at this target, for my first imaging session last month after a 6 months break. I'd forgotten to post up the result of that attempt - wondering if I should?

[glennbech]

Thanks for the welcome back psychobilly. Climbing out of a window into subzero temperatures and having to start the session with shoveling away the snow to dig out my heq5 pro... well.... It just didn't happen too often this last few months.... ;-) Spring is here and my motivation is definitly back.

Thanks for the kind comments as well. The image was taken with my 400D at iso 800. I applied 13 darks from a previous session with aproxemately the same temperature, forgot to mention that.

I might go back under better conditions to bring out the fainter cluster... Please give me some break in the clouds this easter! ;-)