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”


Cheers

Dennis

[RickS (Rick)]

A charming collection of gems, Dennis!

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by RickS

A charming collection of gems, Dennis!

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

Cheers

Dennis

[multiweb (Marc)]

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

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by 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.

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) 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 (Michael)]

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

Mike