2 replies to this topic

[james7ca]

This is an open star cluster than is probably best imaged with a wide field since if you get too close it can begin to blend in with the background stars of the Milky Way. In any case, this reproduction loses some of its impact because of the small scale that is required for uploads to CN (it really needs to be seen at 4K resolution). Plus, with all of these stars I had to compress it greatly to get under the 500KB limit. Other than a 32 pixel crop on all sides this is the full APS-C frame from the Nikon Z30.

 

This had just 16 minutes of exposure time under my Bortle 7 skies and I expect that the only thing that could significantly improve this would be to take a LOT more subs or to image under much darker skies (and with some better processing). Image processing with PixInsight and Photoshop 2024. There are full capture details in the image captions and you can click on the preview to see at full size (1600 x 1200 pixels).

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Edited by james7ca, 09 September 2024 - 05:47 AM.

[EPinNC]

Really nice image!

 

This is an open star cluster than is probably best imaged with a wide field since if you get too close it can begin to blend in with the background stars of the Milky Way.

Agreed.  It's a rather diffuse cluster and loses some appeal at narrower fields of view.

 

Here it is at 1300mm:

https://www.cloudyni...carolines-rose/

 

at 714mm:

https://www.cloudyni...carolines-rose/

 

and at 140mm (zoom lens):

https://www.cloudyni...ide-field-view/

[james7ca]

Yes, and here is a comment I made five years ago here on CN about the prominence of Caroline's Rose, "it is one of the few deep space objects in Cassiopeia that shows up clearly in wide-field, broad-band images of this region. Some of the other candidates are the Owl Cluster (NGC 457), the Double Cluster, M103, the Pacman Nebula, and to a lesser extent the Heart and Soul Nebulae (the latter better in deeper narrow-band images)."

 

Below is an annotated image of the constellation Cassiopeia that was taken back in 2019. This had 115 minutes of exposure time under similar Bortle 7 skies using a NIKKOR AI-S, 35mm lens at f/5.6.

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