Close up of Jewel Box NGC 4755 Open Cluster

[Dennis]

After a 6 month gap I fired up the SBIG ST2000XM and for a trial run, pointed the ‘scope at the Jewel Box to reacquaint myself with CCD imaging. The CCD window promptly frosted over when I set the cooling to a balmy -10 ºC so I re-set it to +1 ºC in an attempt to clear the tendrils of frost. This took longer than I though and so there is some evidence of this in the attached (cropped) LRGB image of this most beautiful cluster.

5 mins each LRGB, Tak Mewlon 180 F12, SBIG ST2000XM CCD camera with CFW9 filter wheel.

Like riding a push bike, CCD imaging isn’t something easily forgotten and I was pleased with this the results of this test run despite a few minor problems such as ccd frosting.:)

For comparison, here is the link to the ESA website for “A Snapshot of the Jewel Box cluster with the ESO VLT” (http://www.eso.org/public/australia/images/eso0940a/)


Cheers

Dennis

[RickS]

A charming collection of gems, Dennis!

[Dennis]

Thanks Rick – the ESO VLT exposures were in the region of 2.6 and 1.3 seconds for each filter…:)

Cheers

Dennis

[multiweb]

Extreme close up. I like the little string of pearls between the center orange and blue stars. Nice resolution. Up to your usual standards. :thumbsup:

[Dennis]

Thanks Marc, I appreciate your kind comments :), although I must confess that it was a bit of a lucky shot and really, most of the credit can go to the Tak optics and mount. For that session, I was experimenting (after a few months dormancy:rolleyes:) with a set of tube rings to get an understanding of the weight and balance issues through using them and the Jewel Box was a nice target for the test run.

These most beautiful cosmic gems deserve a series of longer exposures which hopefully I’ll get round to doing sometime this lifetime!:)

Cheers

Dennis

[strongmanmike]

Yeah, it's a nice shot that Dennis, I agree one to hit with some resonable exposure too, to see how many stars are in there :thumbsup:

Mike