| rodelaet |
| (Post Laureate) |
| 07/05/08 05:19 PM |
| Attachment |
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Binocular Icon 25 : Messier 39 and company.
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The brightest open cluster of Cygnus is Messier 39. With a diameter of more than a full moon, M39 is a beautiful binocular object. To find this open cluster, just drawn an imaginary line from Deneb (Alpha Cygni) to Alpha Lacerta and point your binoculars at the middle of that line. There you’ll find M39 as a large triangular configuration of 6 brighter stars with a dozen fainter ones. While you have this open cluster in your sight, try to find a neighbour of M39: NGC 7082, at one and a half degree to the south. NGC 7082 is rather dim, compared to M39. My binoculars show only a few faint stars in an elongated misty patch of weak unresolved star glow. M39 and NGC 7082 appear to be close companions, but this an optical illusion. While M39 is 830 light-years from us, NGC 7082 is about 5 times further away. With both objects in the field of view, it is not difficult to imagine that NGC 7082 floats far behind M39 through the night sky.
Site : Bütgenbach, Belgium
Date : July 1, 2008
Time : around 23.45 UT
Binoculars : Bresser 8x56
FOV: 5.9°
Filter : none
Mount : Trico Machine Sky Window
Seeing : 3,5/5
Transp. : 4/5
Nelm : around 5.8
Sketch Orientation : N up, W right.
Digital sketch made with Photo Paint, based on a raw pencil sketch.
(Note: if the sketch does look too dark on your monitor, try to darken the room.)
| rolandlinda3 |
| (Carpal Tunnel) |
| 07/05/08 09:57 PM |
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Re: Binocular Icon 25 : Messier 39 and company.
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Rony, very nice choice and sketch. I find myself attracted to the less dense and wider clusters like this one so I am glad you picked it. I want to try it with the Sky Window as well but only have 4 degree FOV and too much magnification to get the nice field you have.
Roland
| rodelaet |
| (Post Laureate) |
| 07/06/08 06:08 PM |
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Re: Binocular Icon 25 : Messier 39 and company.
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Roland,
Thank you!
Your 4 degrees of field can be very rewarding as well. The higher magnification will help to darken the background, and it will show more fainter stars and a better resolution in background haze of clusters than mine.
| frank5817 |
| (Post Laureate) |
| 07/06/08 07:48 PM |
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Re: Binocular Icon 25 : Messier 39 and company.
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Rony,
Great work on this pair of open clusters. This really is a nice piece of celestial real estate and you have captured it with your usual great style.
Frank
| CarlosEH |
| (Post Laureate) |
| 07/07/08 03:02 AM |
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Re: Binocular Icon 25 : Messier 39 and company.
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Rony,
An excellent observation of M39 (NGC 7092) in Cygnus. This is an interesting open cluster as you point out. Six bright jewels among fainter stars. Thank you for sharing it with us all. I hope to observe soon.
Links;
http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys230/lectures/clusters/m39_noao_big.jpg
http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/gallery/m39atlas.jpg
http://www.ngcic.org/DSS/n/7/n7082.jpg
Carlos
| rodelaet |
| (Post Laureate) |
| 07/07/08 04:42 PM |
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Re: Binocular Icon 25 : Messier 39 and company.
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Frank, Carlos,
Your kind words are much appreciated.
Carlos, you succeeded again in finding those fine links.
| GlennLeDrew |
| (Pooh-Bah) |
| 07/07/08 09:37 PM |
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Re: Binocular Icon 25 : Messier 39 and company.
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I've read that M39 is of about the same age as the Ursa Major cluster (the latter lying at ~70 l-y from us) and also shares its space motion. If true, this makes for a very widely separated "double cluster", reminiscent of the situation for the Hyades and M44.
| rodelaet |
| (Post Laureate) |
| 07/08/08 05:11 PM |
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Re: Binocular Icon 25 : Messier 39 and company.
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Glenn,
Interesting, I wonder if viewed from NGC 7082, M39 and the UM cluster could be seen as double clusters.
| Jeremy Perez |
| (Carpal Tunnel) |
| 07/10/08 01:49 PM |
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Re: Binocular Icon 25 : Messier 39 and company.
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Rony, your expansive, richly detailed binocular illustrations are always a pleasure to behold. The depth between M39 and NGC 7082 makes this one especially so. Great work.
| rodelaet |
| (Post Laureate) |
| 07/10/08 06:11 PM |
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Re: Binocular Icon 25 : Messier 39 and company.
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Jeremy,
I'm glad that you like this one.
Thank you!
| GlennLeDrew |
| (Pooh-Bah) |
| 07/23/08 02:55 AM |
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Re: Binocular Icon 25 : Messier 39 and company.
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Quote:
Glenn,
Interesting, I wonder if viewed from NGC 7082, M39 and the UMa cluster could be seen as double clusters.
Just quickly doing a mental layout, I'd have to say that the UMa/M39 pairing (as seen from NGC 7082) would be rather more similar looking than our M39/NGC7082 display. This would be due to the much smaller space separation between UMa and M39, resulting in similar sizes as well as apparent magnitudes of the brighter stars. Moreover, the close distance from us of UMa, combined with the already close alignment of M39/NGC7082, would most likely result in a fairly small angular separation on the sky at NGC7082...
I have a freeware program called Partiview (short for Particle Viewer), available from the Hayden Planetarium. I can't recall if the UMa cluster and NGC7082 are both included in the stock package, but I might have added one or both (if that was indeed necessary) in my version at home. I'm curious to examine the apparent separation of UMa and M39 as seen from NGC7082 (because in partiview you can travel where you like!)
BTW, I highly recommend that you install this neat program. The learning curve can be a bit steep, but it's an amazing visualization engine. And you can modify or add all the databases you wish! In certain respects it's only limited by your own imagination.
P.S. I submitted the OB association data that's used by the program...