Berkeley 67 turned out more interesting than I expected when Sh2-211 showed up unexpectedly in the frame. While many Sharpless objects show up in my default settings for The Sky this wasn't one of them. Also, the field has a lot of very faint dark nebulae in it, especially to the north of the cluster. The field is located in the northeast corner of Perseus.

WEBDA puts the distance to Berkeley 67 at about 8100 light-years and says it is reddened by 0.79 magnitudes. The main reason its stars are red however is its age which is one billion years per WEBDA. The really blue stars have long since died leaving mostly white and cooler stars. Couple that with the reddening and the star colors make sense. Amateur images of this cluster in color are very rare. I found only a couple.

The dark nebula immediately north of the cluster is DOBASHI 4098. At the very top of the image is the dark nebula TGU H1036 P1. The ill-defined dark nebula north of Sh2-211 is [DB2002b] G154.61+2.53.

Sh2-211 has an infrared star cluster embedded in it. Some of the stars can be seen in visible light. The three brightest stars are part of this cluster. Like Berkeley 67 I found little in the way of amateur images of this nebula. Those also included the Berkeley cluster and one was wide field enough to catch Sh2-212 out of my frame to the southeast. It is a much better and more commonly imaged object.

Trying to find distance estimates for Sh2-211 wasn't easy. I came up with three at one source ranging from 11,500 light-years to 25,000 light-years. Some say it may be part of the same molecular cloud as Sh2-212. But the distance estimated for that object ranged from 19,500 light-years to 21,500 light-years. A much smaller range. There is some overlap. Lots of uncertainty here.

Why this interesting field is so rarely taken by amateurs is a mystery to me as there's a lot going on here.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick



http://www.mantrapskies.com//image-archive/OTHER/BERKELEY067-SH2-211/BERKELEY067L4X10RGB2X10.JPG
http://www.mantrapskies.com/image-archive/OTHER/BERKELEY067-SH2-211/BERKELEY067L4X10RGB2X10CROP.JPG