Messier 23 Open Cluster

Sagittarius

 (ra: 17:56.8 / dec -19:01)

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June 2010, Star Party in Huellas de la Naturaleza with Proxima Sur 70 km away from Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

DATA

TYPE: Open Cluster

APPARENT MAGNITUDE: 6.9

SIZE: 27 arcs minutes

DISTANCE: 2.150 light years

OBJECT DESCRIPTION AND IMAGE SESSION

M23 was one of the original discoveries of Charles Messier, the night of June the 20th of 1764.  It is an elegant open cluster with star around magnitude 10 to 13. For the observers it present some relative lack of contrast because the populated star background.

The picture reveals this cluster away from the old brownish stars of the center of our Milky way.

M23 can be easily found either 2.5 deg N and 3.5 deg W of Mu Sagittarii, approximately on the line to Xi Serpentis

IMAGE INFORMATION

SCOPE: Celestron SCT 8" working at 6.3

SKY CONDITIONS: Regular to bad night. Lot of humidity and poor seeing

CAMERAS: QSI 583 WS -20Cº

FILTERS: Astronomik Type 2

EXPOSURES: LRGB (20,20,20,20) 120 subs

GUIDING: William Optics ZenithStar 66 f6. Starlight Xpress Lodestar Camera. AA 3.71 Control Camera Plug-in

PROCESSING: No darks, nor flats, nor offsets. Images Plus Sigma Median Combination, CCD Sharp Richardson Lucy Deconvolution Photoshop CS