The M46/M47 Deep Sky Assemblage

Clusters, planetaries in Puppis

Uploaded 3/22/06

Select an image size for a larger view: 800 x 600 1200 x 800 1600 X 1200

 As I slowly ramp up the exposure times for this new instrument, a wealth of deep sky splendors is emerging. This image ranks as a close to the schmidt camera as I can achieve digitally, and the fast f/4.7 ratio is revealing deep images in a short period of exposure time.

This image is dominated by the large and rich open cluster at the top called M47, and its attending planetary nebula - the red disk within, NGC2438. You can see that this cluster is a mix of both blue and gold super giants in the larger images. Below center is the exciting splashy bright open cluster M47, both cluster are seen easily with the naked eye on a moonless night. Several other objects indicated are especially interesting as well.

Several smaller objects are of interest in this field. NGC2425 is small but contains several very nicely colored stars. The large and faint splashy open cluster NGC2423 on the right is pretty monochrome, but has a definite boundary.

Lets not forget the blazing yellow star to the left of center - Thats 4.97 magnitude SAO153227, an amazing K3III type star with a B-V index of 1.6.

The smallest star images on the original frames are tiny squares. This is from under sampling such tight and small star images produced by this instrument. I am running somewhere near 3.8 arcsecond per pixel in these images.

Instrument: Stellarvue SV80S Refractor w/.8x TR2008 Field Flattener, EFR = 80mm f/4.74 @ 379mm FL Platform: Astrophysics AP1200 Camera: Canon 10D @ ISO800 Exposure: 20m Filters: Standard IR Block Location: Payson, Arizona Elevation: 5150 ft. Sky: Seeing 6/10, Transparency 8/10 Outside Temperature: 30F Processing Tools: Photoshop CS, Maxim DL, PixInsight, Raw Essentials HOME GALAXIES EMISSION NEBS REFLECTION NEBS COMETS GLOBULARS OPEN CLUST PLANETARIES LINKS FastCounter by bCentral