| NOTES |
DATE:
|
Saturday,
September 3, 2005 |
TIME:
|
10:13
pm - 10:18 pm EDT
|
CAMERA:
|
Canon
EOS 300D Digital Rebel |
EXPOSURE:
|
2 x 4
minutes @ ISO 800 |
LOCATION:
|
Black
Forest Star Party (Cherry Springs State Park,
Potter County, Pennsylvania) |
INSTRUMENT:
|
Tele
Vue Pronto 70 mm refractor (with Focal Reducer/Field
Flattener) piggybacked on 10" LX200. |
PROCESSING:
|
Dark frame subtracted, aligned, stacked,
enhanced and cropped with
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 |
COMMENTS:
|
The
Double Cluster is actually two unrelated open
clusters that just so happen to lie along the same line of site as
viewed
from Earth. The cluster on the left is NGC 884 and is 7,500
light-years away. NGC 869, on the right, is "slightly" closer at
7,200 light-years away. While the distances apart may not seem
like much, their ages are. NGC 869 is quite a bit younger than
NGC 884, by about 8 million years! |
|
