Instrument

12.5" RCOS @  ~f/9 (2880 mm fl) at 1.28 arcsec/pixel. Shown at 1.23 and 2.95 arcsec/pixel.

Mount

Paramount ME

Camera

SBIG STL-11000 w/ FW8 filter wheel, AstroDon Gen-2 Filters

Acquisition Data

9/4/2010 to 11/12/2010 Chino Valley, AZ... with CCDAutoPilot3 & CCDSoft.  AOL guided

Exposure

Software & Processing Notes

• CCDSoft, CCDStack, Photoshop CS6, PixInsight and Noel Carboni's actions

• CCDBand-Aid to repair KAI-11000M vertical bars.

• eXcalibrator for (b-v), (v-r) color calibration, using 32 stars from the NOMAD1 database.

• PixFix32 (pre-beta) to repair column defects.

• CCDStack to calibrate, register, normalize, data reject, combining the sub exposures and RGB creation.

• PixInsight processing includes gradient removal, the initial non-linear stretching with HistogramTransformation. HDRMultiscaleTransform was used to enhance the detail.

• PhotoShop for the LRGB combine, adding Ha data to the red channel and final touch up.

Comment

The nebula is shown with north to the top.
 

Also catalogued as NGC 2099, M37 is in the constellation Auriga at a distance of about 4,500 light years. The age of the cluster is estimated as between 350 and 550 million years. M37 contains about 150 stars brighter than magnitude 12.5 and at least 12 red giants.

Giovanni Battista Hodierna discovered the cluster sometime before 1654. Charles Messier independently rediscovered it in 1764 as object number 37 in his catalog.