M38 is the third of three Messier Open Clusters in the constellation of Auriga, in the Northern hemisphere of the sky. The other two Messier clusters are M36 and M37. All of them are easily visible with binoculars and are seen as faint smudges against the darker background. If you read my post on the Constellation of Auriga you will see all three of the Open Clusters in the same image M38 Open Cluster Image Technical Data Imaged from my back yard in Nottingham, UK on the 18th January 2020 whilst high overhead from my location. I used my TEC 140 refractor with Atik 460 cooled CCD camera and Astrodon RGB E Series Generation 2 filters. I used my MESU 200 mount guided with OAG. All exposures binned 1×1: Red > 12 x 180s ; Green > 14 x 180s ; Blue > 13 x 180s. This gives a total integration…

Introduction And Rationale For Purchase QHY268C on Takahashi FSQ85. Note the totem pole of adapters to the right of the QHYOAG-M in order to get a screw fit onto the FSQ85 focuser I am already a very happy owner and user of two CCD mono cameras and associated filter wheels; an Atik 460 CCD with EFW2 and a Moravian Instruments G2-8300 CCD camera.  I have been very pleased with the performance of both, I enjoy using them and will continue to do so.  I have connected my Moravian CCD for use exclusively on my Samyang 135mm lens and it is semi-permanently attached to it.  I have my Atik460 semi-permanently attached to my TEC140 scope.   I do not want to disturb these two hardware arrangements.  However, this leaves me without a camera for my excellent Takahashi FSQ85.  So with this in mind I needed to acquire a third, cooled, astro-imaging camera.I…

Kemble’s Cascade in Widefield Setting Kemble’s Cascade (Kemble 1) is a chance straight-line alignment of 17 or so stars between the 5th and 10th magnitudes in the far northern constellation of Camelopardalis. The stars are of different colours and look lovely in a widefield telescope or binoculars. At the end of line of stars is the open star cluster NGC 1502. This asterism is named after the Franciscan monk and amateur astronomer Lucian Kemble. The cascade itself is about three angular degrees in length. Image Technical Data Imaged from my backyard in Nottingham, UK on 14 September 2020. Part of an automated capture sequence and the exposures were taken between 02:00 > 04:00 in the morning. Needless to say I was in bed asleep at the time 🙂 I processed the images afterwards. I used Samyang 135mm DSLR lens connected to my Moravian Instruments G2-8300 CCD camera with Astrodon RGB…