Thursday, January 05, 2017

imaged M34 (Halifax)

I asked the Burke-Gaffney robotic telescope to image Messier 34 for me. An open cluster in Perseus.

Previously viewed during a whirlwind session in March 2013, I wanted to visit M34 again. Partly to review the colours of the stars. And on learning it contained many multi-star and double-star systems I wanted to carefully examine them.

open cluster Messier 34 with multi-star systems luminance

Luminance only, 30 seconds subexposures, 10 stacked shots. FITS Liberator, Paint.NET. North is up; east is left.

West-north-west from centre, close to the centre, is a bright wide pair. They are nearly equal in brightness; SkyTools 3 Pro says they are magnitudes 8.4 and 8.5. This is HD 16705 aka HJ 1123. They are oriented roughly in a north-east to south-west.

West-south-west from centre, well away, near the right edge of the frame, is an unequal tight pair. They are about 2 magnitudes different in brightness. ST3P says 9.5 and 10.9. This is HD 16627 aka HJ 2154. They are oriented north-west to south-east.

There is a multi-star system due south of centre. HD 16728 or STT 44. The very wide almost equal bright stars are A and C (HD 16719 proper). C is west-north-west from A. The D companion is south-east of C, dimmer, relatively close. The B star is not visible to me. It is a very tight partner to A. It is curious to me why the other 3 stars, while fainter, are not considered part of this system.

Due east of centre is the delicate pair SAO 38259 or ES 1506 with a bright primary and nearly-touching secondary.

Finally, to the east-north-east is another bright pair, HD 16782 aka HJ 2155. The B star is a couple of levels fainter than A.

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Wikipedia link: Messier 34.

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