New Forest Observatory ®

Picture of the Week is Greg’s 3 asterism in Leo seen almost dead centre in this image. The image comprises 14 x 12-minute subs taken with the 200mm lenses and M26C OSC CCDs.

I first discovered this asterism whilst scanning across “The Sky 6” planetarium program looking for something interesting. It certainly looked VERY interesting on the monitor. As the object was not in my sky at the time I then downloaded the DSS2 data to have a look at it. Looked EXTREMELY interesting! I then had to wait a few months to get my first Sky90 image of the asterism, and then there was a couple of years wait before getting the 200mm lens image you see above.

For this week’s “Picture of the Week” I have chosen my favourite asterism, namely Kemble’s Cascade. Not only is this a superb star cluster in its own right, but it also has 3 very special stars closely associated with it. These are:

1. UV Camelopardalis, SAO13009, R-type star.
2. V Camelopardalis, SAO12870, N-type star.
3. BD Camelopardalis, SAO12874, S-type star.

I like this region so much I have imaged it with the Hyperstars, the Sky90 array and the 200mm lenses. The first image above is a 4-frame mosaic using the Sky90 array. The second image is a single framer using the 200mm lenses, and the third image is a composite with the R, N and S-type stars annotated.