Hooray – September – and some decent long evenings after what has been a very long wait.
So what can we spend our time on this month to make all the effort of maintaining an interest in this hobby worthwhile?
Well, I particularly like imaging in the north, mainly because this isn’t done too much. And what about going for the most northerly Caldwell object? Caldwell 1, otherwise known as NGC188 – a nice large open cluster in Cepheus.
NGC188 lies around 4,800 light years away and shines at a magnitude of 7.1 (O’Meara) with an apparent diameter of 15 arc minutes – so fairly large. There isn’t much up this high in the northern wastes so NGC188 is a bit of a gem out there all on its own. It does quite well even in the large field of view of the Sky 90, and the large FOV does accentuate the barren surroundings of Caldwell 1 – something that once again gives the image a little bit of impact.
As with clusters in general, I recommend 3-5 minute sub-exposures and as close to 100 as you can get for a nice low-noise image.
NGC188 is one of my favourite open clusters, and as it doesn’t seem to get much imaging time, why not give it a try this year?
Until October – clear, dark skies to you all 🙂
