M103
Messier 103 - Click here for full resolution
Messier 103 (also known as NGC 581) is a small open cluster of many faint stars in Cassiopeia. It was discovered on 27 March 1781 by Pierre Méchain, but later added as Charles Messier's last deep-sky object in his catalogue. It is located 9,400 light-years from the Sun and is about 15 light years across. It holds two prominent stars, of which the brightest is magnitude 10.5, and in the center of the cluster, another magnitude 10.8 red giant. Another bright foreground object is the double star Struve 131, but is not a member of the cluster. Cluster membership is about 172 stars based on >50% probability of gravitational attachment that binds the cluster together. M103 is between 12.6 to 25 million years in age.
source: Wikipedia
NGC/IC:
Other Names:
Object:
Constellation:
R.A.:
Dec:
Transit date:
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NGC581
n.a.
Open Cluster
Cassiopeia
01h 33m 23s
+60° 39.0′
15 November
67º N
Conditions
M103 can be very well observed in Autumn, with maximum altitudes reaching 67° in the North. M103 was photographed over 3 nights, during full moon conditions mid October 2024 from the remote observatory at IC Astronomy in Oria, Spain.
Equipment
The default rig at the observatory was used. The core of this rig is a Planewave CDK-14 telescope on a 10Micron GM2000 mount, coupled to a Moravian C3-61000 Pro full-frame camera. The RoboTarget module in Voyager Advanced automated the process to find optimal time-slots during astronomical night.
Telescope
Mount
Camera
Filters
Guiding
Accessoires
Software
Planewave CDK14, Optec Gemini Rotating focuser
10Micron GM2000HPS, custom pier
Moravian C3-61000 Pro, cooled to -10 ºC
Chroma 50mm Luminance, Red, Green and Blue unmounted, Moravian filterwheel L, 7-position
Unguided
Compulab Tensor I-22, Windows 11, Dragonfly, Pegasus Ultimate Powerbox v2
Voyager Advanced, Viking, Mountwizzard4, Astroplanner, PixInsight 1.8.9-3
Imaging
Star clusters are ideal objects to photograph during full moon periods, as was done here. For that reason, all exposures were limited to 180s for both RGB and Luminance filters. The image was shot as a broadband image, using standard LRGB filters. A total of approximately 11.5h of exposure was captured.
Resolution (original)
Focal length
Pixel size
Resolution
Field of View (original)
Image center
4000 × 3000 px (12.0 MP)
2585 mm @ f/7.3
3.8 µm
0.30 arcsec/px
20' x 15'
RA: 01h 33m 27.221s
Dec: +60° 39’ 00.63”
Processing
All images were calibrated using Darks (50), Flats (50) and Flat-Darks (50), registered and integrated using the WeightedBatchPreProcessing (WBPP) script in PixInsight. All further processing was done in PixInsight, including the use of scripts and tools developed by RC-Astro, SetiAstro, GraXpert, and others. For a step-by-step description of the processing techniques applied, see the below schedule.
For many images, unfortunately some dust motes had landed on the filter in between sets of flats. These dust motes were not corrected for. To clean this up, stars were removed, the blemish blaster from SetiAstro was applied, and stars were put back in.
The target is very small relative to the Field of View (FoV) of the setup used. Therefore the final image was cropped to about a 20’x15’ FoV.
The rest of the processing followed the usual process.
Processing workflow (click to enlarge)
This image has been published on Astrobin.
