Well, not exactly the Douglas Adam’s cluster as that would look like the number “42” – whereas this open cluster in Orion bears a striking resemblance to the number “37” and is therefore known as the 37-cluster.
The 37 cluster, NGC2169 lies around 3,000 light-years away in the constellation Orion. Being a fairly bright open cluster we can get away with short 2-3 minute subs, and we can also get away with a short total imaging time of just a couple of hours. You get a lot more back for your short investment in time than with many other deep-sky objects. A little digital processing on your data (Noel’s enhance star colours helps a lot here) and you will end up with an incredible figure “37” appearing like a Neon display in an otherwise unimpressive star background.
Just a short amount of time needed to bag this one – so you can move onto the many other gems of Orion in the same evening and grab some more data 🙂
See you again in the New Year, have a good Christmas, and let’s hope that 2010 brings us some better imaging weather than we got dished up in 2009!!
