NGC 1981 (Lund 187, Cr 73) Open Cluster in Orion
Located at: RA 05 hours 35 minutes 12 seconds, Dec -04 degrees 26 minutes 00 seconds
Size: 24' (28'); Magnitude: 4.2; Class: III 3 p n
North is up
West to the right
| Telescope: |
8" f5 Newtonian reflector |
| Camera: |
ST-8XME, self-guided, binned 1x1, temp -25c, camera control MaxIm DL 4.56 |
| Image: |
Lumicon Red filter, 240 minutes (24 x 10 minute subs) 02/22/2010; seeing 2.6-3.8 FWHM per CCDStack |
| Processing: |
CCDStack 1.6.1, Photoshop 7.0 |
| Location: |
Rolling Roof Observatory, Thousand Oaks, CA 91360 (+34d 13m 29s -118h 52m 20s) |
| Notes: |
This sparse open cluster is located just North (above) NGC 1973/1975/1977 (aka "Running Man Nebula"), which is the nebulosity to the South (below), and M 42 / M 43. According to "Star Clusters", by Brent Archinal and Steven Hynes, the size of this open cluster is 28 arc minutes. From the NGC / IC Project: Contemporary Visual Observation(s) for NGC 1981 NGC 1981 = Cr 73 = OCL-525 = Lund 187 05 35 10 -04 25.5 V = 4.6; Size 25 8": bright cluster with about two dozen stars mag 6 and fainter. Very large, scattered. Includes ?750 = 6.0-8.0 at 40". To the south is another group of bright stars surrounded by the emission nebula N1973-N1977. - by Steve Gottlieb |