NGC 1342 (Lund 110, Cr 40) Open Cluster in Perseus
Located at: RA 03 hours 31 minutes 36 seconds, Dec +37 degrees 23 minutes 00 seconds
Size: 14' (17'); Magnitude: 6.7; Class: III 2 m (n?)
North is up
West to the right
| Telescope: |
8" f5 Newtonian reflector |
| Camera: |
ST-8XME, self-guided, binned 1x1, temp -30c & -25c &-20c, camera control MaxIm DL 4.56 |
| Image: |
Lumicon Red filter, 820 minutes (82 x 10 minute subs) 12/8/14/16/18/2009; seeing 2.5-4.7 FWHM per CCDStack |
| Processing: |
CCDStack 1.6.0.6, Photoshop 7.0 |
| Location: |
Rolling Roof Observatory, Thousand Oaks, CA 91360 (+34d 13m 29s -118h 52m 20s) |
| Notes: | Finished this up during a few breaks in the clouds. The 80 degree
weather during the day caused me to drop the camera temperature from
-30c to -20c. Breezy Santa Ana's worsted the seeing, and high clouds
intruded at times. See this wonderfully deep
wide image of
the
nebulosity around NGC 1342 by
Gimmi Ratto. The nebulosity pervading this field is probably
LBN 718/719. According to "Star Clusters", by Brent Archinal and Steven Hynes, the size of this open cluster is 17 arc minutes. From the NGC / IC Project: Contemporary Visual Observation(s) for NGC 1342NGC 1342 = Cr 40 = Mel 21 = OCL-401 03 31.6 +37 22 V = 6.7; Size 14 17.5": about 100 stars mag 9-14 in 15' diameter, scattered in chains and loops. Two mag 8 stars off the NE side are probably field stars, a nice double star is at the W end. There are several striking star lanes at low power including a long stream oriented E-W. A line of six stars oriented NW-SE forms the SW side and terminates at an easy double star. The NW end is near the striking double star (10.4/11.2 at 14". The field has a large variation of magnitudes. 8": bright, large, scattered, consists of mag 8 stars and fainter. - by Steve Gottlieb |