SCIENCE vs Photography
Using the 6-inch Celestron Origin Astrograph For Science Education
Less than one month after my Origin's first light, I began capturing star fields for educational purposes - my education! For example, this image captured the beautiful Double Cluster in Perseus, NGC 869 and NGC 884. It's just one photograph like thousands of others; no big deal. What is a big deal is all of the astronomy scattered throughout this 1.27" x 0.85" field of view just waiting to be explored.
After surviving a stroke, my new Celestron Origin Astrograph is playing a significant role in my rehabilitation. It was important that I learn to read again, comprehend what I was reading, and re-learn everything that I no longer knew about astronomy, physics, mathematics, and science in general. It's been a hard journey but I am proud to say that I finally, after more than a decade, read a book cover to cover - The Perfect Machine: Building the Palomar Telescope, Ronald Florence, HarperPerennial, New York, 1994. I am currently working my way through an advanced university level textbook filled with mathematics from simple geometry to calculus - Fundamental Astronomy, 6th Edition, Hannu Karttunen, Pekka Kröger, Heikki Oja, Mark Poutanen, and Karl Johan Donner, Editors, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2017.
So, let's analyze this photograph using all of the knowledge I have gained over the last year and a half, making good use of astronomy books, magazines, online surveys, and apps.
Logbook
Date & Time: August 12, 2024, 10:04 p.m.
Location: Kempt Shore, Nova Scotia, Canada, 45°N
Conditions: Clear
Moon: First quarter (54%)
Moonset: 11:38 p.m.
Technical: 10-sec exposures, 30-min integration, line power, no filter, no post-processing
Celestron Origin Astrograph Image
One of the most obvious features of this 1.27° x 0.85° field of view photograph is the presence of several red supergiant stars. I have labeled seven of them. These huge stars have variable visual magnitudes, some periodic and others without regular periods. Let's have a look at their spectral types.
References
1. "Galactic OB Associations in the Northern Milky Way Galaxy. I. Longitudes 55° to 150°," C.D. Garmany and R.E. Stencel, Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser. 94, 211-244 (1992).