NGC 752 - Open Cluster in Andromeda

Thanks everyone for the kind words (Kieran excepted ).

Steve, if you are aware of any similar gems, please let me know. I love pursuing open clusters and they usually receive higher priority than other targets. I have a cheat sheet with about 20 outstanding open clusters for me to pursue and I am most interested if you have any which I may have missed.

Anthony.

Anthony - its a lovely image but like your ex-friend, Kieran, I'm not a fan of the spikes

But, the colours are superb and the backdround looks spot on, other than top left corner. I see an arc that looks a lot backer than surrounding areas... But its barely noticeable.

Dave (another ex-friend...)

Hi Dave,

You have a sharp eye! That particular arc is a damn circle on my flats which I cannot get rid of and irrespective of the flat I use. I have tried flats from 1 sec to 10 seconds (ie. 2500 to 25000 ADU) and it seems to be "stuck".

Part of the problem is that I tend to really streeeeeetch my histograms to bring out as much of the faint detail as possible and, regrettably, this aggravates the situation with this particular area on the luminance filter.

To add insult to injury, there is a nominal difference of around 60 ADU from what I recall and which manifests itself due to the aggressive non-linear stretch on my part.

Anthony.

Hi Anthony,
I looking again at this image on my laptop screen, and the background looks a little bright to me, almost looks like a circular vignetting centered just below center, so I ran it through photoshop and adjusted the levels to darken the background, its probabily my screen making this alot worse then it is, I just thought I'd give it a mention.
The star spikes and colour are superb, adds dramatic flare to it.

There's almost too many to list Anthony, but, on our last observing session, I managed to observe four real beauties;

NGC1647 in Taurus (near the Hyades)

NGC1502 in Camelopardalis. This lies at the "bottom" of Kemble's Cascade, so would make either a good target in itself, or as part of a wider field with the cascade.

And two of my favourites, very different but close together:

NGC1545 and NGC1528 (the magic pentagram), both in Perseus.

Also, with Orion now prominent, there is both NGC1981, just above M42 and the Running Man, and Collinder 72, just below M42.

And last, but most definitely not least, the wonderful M35, with the nearby NGC2158.

They will keep you going for a while.

I see an arc that looks a lot backer than surrounding areas...

Its a big arc which suggests the offending muck/dust is further out the optic train than the ccd cover glass. Ye might need to clean the filters Anto and update the flats.