NGC2182

NGC 2182, 2183 and 2185 are reflection nebulae in southeastern Monoceros. The area around the latter two is chock full of Young Stellar Objects and Herbig-Haro objects often associated with YSOs. Some of these probably account for the H alpha emission near NGC 2183. Most sources seem to agree as to where these are located but oddly SIMBAD has a problem with the last two. I wasn't going to make an annotated image but the odd identifications in SIMBAD changed my mind. The standard positions are noted with the labels NGC Project after the NGC number as they go with the common locations. SIMBAD, however, puts the center of NGC 2185 in the middle of nowhere. Maybe they consider the entire complex NGC 2185, I don't know why else they'd do this. While most sources put NGC 2183 around the 9th magnitude star GSC 4795:829 SIMBAD says this nebula is [RK68] 53. NGC 2183 is to the east at the position of a small HII region. In fact, SIMBAD labels it as an HII region, not a reflection nebula. NGC 2185 is placed by most sources as the nebula around the stars east of NGC 2183 rather than where SIMBAD puts it. The portion of the reflection nebula around GSC 4795:509 is also known as GN 06.08.7. I think it quite likely all these reflection nebulae are caused by the same gas and dust cloud. We just see the reflection nebulae when there's a bright star behind them to illuminate them. The Sky shows the illuminating star for NGC 2182 to have a parallax of .0349" which puts it and therefore the nebula about 100 light-years away. Yet other sources say 2300 to 2700 light-years. Quite a discrepancy! The latter seems more reasonable given the angular size of the nebulae. So maybe some other star is illuminating NGC 2182 rather than the "obvious" one.

NGC 2182 was discovered by William Herschel on February 24, 1786 and is in the second Herschel 400 observing program. NGC 2183 was found by Bindon Stoney in 1850. NGC 2185 was discovered by William Herschel on October 16, 1784. It is in the first Herschel 400 program. My entry for it on March 16, 1985 is rather confused. I don't know what I was on but it was apparently "good stuff". I used my 10" f/5 at 60 power (that eyepiece was a 40 degree eyepiece so if I centered NGC 2185 then NGC 2182 wouldn't even be in the field). Here's my confused entry: "With NGC 2183 and 2184 (2184 is far out of the field - did I mean 2182?). Each appears as a faint, less than 12th magnitude star with even fainter reflection nebula around it. 2183 and 85 seem to be touching. An interesting and unique sight!" Did I think that the two parts of 2185 were 2183 and 2185 and the real 2183 was 2184? I need a time machine to find out what I saw.

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

Related Designations for NGC2182

NGC2186

NGC 2186 is a type II2p open cluster in eastern Orion about half way between Betelgeuse and the Rosette Nebula. WEBDA says it is about 55 million years old, 4,700 light-years distant and reddened by only 0.27 magnitudes. This means its O and B stars have died though late B might create still exist as a red giant, maybe the one seen at the top of the cluster. Brilliant A and F stars make up most of the blue stars seen in this cluster.

It was discovered by William Herschel on January 27, 1786 and is included in the original Herschel 400 observing program. I'd have expected that to mean it was fairly well known. A search of several forums turned up a dozen or so references to it, mostly in observing lists. Though I found a couple folks reporting they found it by accident thinking they'd found something more famous and were bummed out to discover they'd been lost in space. My comments from the original Herschel program made on March 16, 1985 with my 10' f/5 on an average night at 120x reads: "Open cluster with 2 bright stars and a dozen fainter ones against a background of unresolved fuzz from stars dimmer than 14th magnitude. Many scattered outlying stars beyond the 5' diameter of the fuzz are seen. Are these cluster members?" A check of various sources give a size for it of 4' or 5' so apparently the answer to my question is no.

I took only one round of color as that is sufficient for imaging clusters. Also, no space junk passed through the color frames so I didn't need a second to remove space junk.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount

Related Designations for NGC2186

NGC2192

NGC 2192 is a rather tight but somewhat sparse open cluster in Auriga about 8,000 light-years distant with a Trumpler classification of III1p meaning it has no concentration of stars toward the center, the stars are evenly bright and it contains less than 50 stars. But it fit my field and is in the second Herschel 400 list of objects which my system is programmed to grab a frame or two on when nothing better is available (usually when waiting for something better to move into my imaging window. The luminance was taken one night and the color data taken over two other nights. I only managed one frame of each color but since there were no satellites I decided to end it last November. William Herschel found it on December 31, 1788. Apparently, he wasn't out boozing up New Year's Eve. Maybe that wasn't done in England in 1788.

The image contains two asteroids. Transparency wasn't good the night I got the luminance so they aren't as bright as normal for their magnitude and there's no color for them since that was taken on different nights.

I measure the diameter of the cluster at about 7.5 minutes but it's hard to tell where the cluster ends and field stars begin. Most catalogs give it a diameter of 5 minutes. If it is 5 minutes then the cluster is about 11.6 light-years across. If my 7.5 minutes is more correct then the diameter is 17.4 light-years. WEBDA gives an age for the cluster of just under 2 million years. That's not enough time for any blue stars to have evolved to red giants. Red dwarfs would be too faint so I assume the orange stars in the cluster are most likely not true members of the cluster. Most sources show it as virtually free of reddening from intervening dust.

There is obviously a lot of dust blocking distant galaxies from being seen. Only one is obvious and even that one is hard to see hiding behind a somewhat orange star just beyond the southwest edge of the cluster. NED doesn't show it at all as not even the 2MASS picked it up. It and the two asteroids are annotated in the cropped image which is at 1.5" per pixel. It is just noted as G? as I can't even verify it is a galaxy though I can't imagine it being anything else. I didn't note the cluster as that was rather obvious.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' RGB=1x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2192

NGC2194

NGC 2194 is an open cluster just east of Orion's club about 12,000 light years away. That makes it 35 to 46 light-years in diameter depending on whose size measurement you use. As open clusters go this one is rather old at about 325 million years of age. This likely accounts for the numerous red giant (actually orange) stars seen in the cluster. The cluster is lightly reddened by 0.38 magnitudes. That isn't enough to account for these red stars.

The cluster was found by William Herschel on February 11, 1784 and is included in the original Herschel 400 observing program. My notes on a rather poor night with my 10" f/5 on February 29, 1984 reads: "Loose and rather faint. Only a dozen or so stars seen against an unresolved background. City lights have pretty well drowned it out (population about 130,000)." Apparently, I never tried under dark skies. I assume it is much better than this indicates if seen under my current skies. Though I used up to 195X to try and dim the fog of city lights, it didn't work that night.

On the upper left edge, another cluster can be seen sneaking in. It is the obscure cluster [KPS2012] MWSC 0817. That's the only designation for it I found at SIMBAD. However, WEBDA has it under the name Luginbuhl-Skiff1. They say it is at a distance of 3150 pc (10,000 light-years) and has an age of 250 million years so a bit younger than 2194 and a bit closer. I assume the name refers to Christian Luginbuhl and Brian Skiff. Luginbuhl is at the Naval Observatory in Flagstaff while Skiff is at Lowell Observatory also in Flagstaff. I have to admit I didn't know of this cluster until I saw it in the image. Has anyone reported seeing it visually? According to WEBDA, there is no Luginbuhl-Skiff2. It appears it is a catalog of one object.

I imaged this field as part of my project to pick up Herschel 400 objects when nothing else is worth shooting -- in this case due to moonlight. It turned out I picked up something so obscure I'd never heard of it before. If I had I'd have framed it a bit differently.

Several dozen background galaxies can be seen in the image, all very small. None have any redshift data and in fact, have little data at all just being noted as to position and that's about all. Therefore I didn't create an annotated image.

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

Related Designations for NGC2194

NGC2245

NGC 2245 (near center) and NGC 2247 are a pair of reflection nebulae in Monoceros not far from many more famous larger nebulae such as the emission Cone Nebula and mostly reflection Fox Fur nebula as well as some Barnard dark Nebulae. The distance to these seems rather vague. Most put it near the outer edge of the Orion Arm which would be about 3000 light-years. But, I always seem to run into "buts", NGC 2247 is also vdB 82 whose illuminating star is HD 259431 a B6 star that Hipparcos puts at 945 light-years. Then there's 2245. What's its illuminating star? Is it the very bright HD 46265 just to its northeast side? Probably not as it is a K0 star at nearly 6000 light years. More likely it is the variable star V699 Orionis at the north end of the brightest part of the nebula. It is an 11th magnitude B6 star. However, I have no distance estimate for it. Seen by the 2MASS survey it is the brightest of a small group of stars, the others being seen best in IR light hidden behind all the dust of NGC 2245 and likely having formed out of it. Some, however, are barely visible in my image.

NGC 2245 has some H alpha emission but it was too weak for me to pick up as my camera is not great for that frequency and conditions for this one were poor with red getting hurt the most. In fact, this one is a jinx for me. I got the luminance data nearly two years ago but clouds moved in ruining color data. Two more tries that season failed to get usable color frames, then 2013 was also a bust for the color data. Finally, at the very end of February, I got another chance for the color data but saving red to last it got hit by fog rolling in and is weak. After three years of trying I gave up and used what that February night gave me, not much.

NGC 2245 was discovered by William Herschel on January 16, 1784. It is in the second H400 observing program. NGC 2249 was discovered by his son John Herschel on December 23, 1834.

The reflection nebula vdB 79 in the upper right corner is apparently lit by HD 258973 an A2 star. I say apparently because the star is only 54 light-years away so not likely the illuminating source if this nebula is part of the same complex as NGC 2245 and 2247. Van den Berg listed his nebulae using the bright star nearest it without confirming if it really was the illumination source as best I can tell. So is vdB 79 a nearby object or part of the entire complex of which the two NGC objects are a small part? I don't know.

The annotated image has a question mark by an orange object above center. I couldn't find it anyplace. I have no idea what it is. It's located on the edge of the dark nebula DOBASHI 4723 and seems to have two rays to the southeast. I can't find any cataloged object within even one minute of arc of its position 6h 32m 61.6s +10° 17' 35".

As is often the case I seem to have found more questions than I answered with this one, especially as to how far these three objects are from us.

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

Related Designations for NGC2245

NGC225

VdB 4 is a reflection nebula associated with the very young open star cluster NGC 225 which is often called the Sailboat Cluster. I've never seen that likeness, however. The nebula may be the remains of the cloud that formed the cluster. The WEBDA puts the distance to the cluster and thus nebula (if it is related) at about 2000 light-years. But this is quite uncertain. A very interesting paper on the probable PMS stars in the cluster illustrates the problems with determining the distance to such clusters. The paper estimates the cluster is between a half million and 10 million years old based on its study of the PMS stars. No PMS doesn't mean that. It means Pre Main Sequence. Indicating these are very young stars still not settled in to getting all their energy from turning hydrogen to helium which will power the star for most of its life. The birth process isn't quite complete yet you might say. For those who want the details the paper is at:
http://www.ncra.tifr.res.in/~basi/06December/200634315.pdf

The cluster was discovered by Caroline Herschel on September 27, 1783 as #11 on her list. A few months later she found it again recording it as #15 in 1784. The Sailboat name seems to be due to Rod Pommier in an article for Astronomy magazine. Even though Caroline is credited with its discovery it is in the original Hershel 400 observing program. William did record it over 5 years later on November 26, 1788. My comments from my H400 log on July 11, 1985 under good conditions at 60 power with my 10" f/5 read; "Large, sparse, scattered cluster of 20 bright stars and 15 or so much fainter ones. These may not be true members of the cluster but only field stars. With such a poor cluster it is hard to tell. How could the program ever call it rich? A good 2.4" telescope cluster but poorly suited to my 10." I never did notice vdB 4.

VdB 4 is centered on the variable star V594 Cas. The only designation I find at Simbad for the dark nebula going out of the top of my image is [LM99] 2. To me, vdB 4 looks like an alien standing with his curving arms to the left. They seem to surround a dark area. Simbad labels the brighter area just southeast of this dark region LDN 1302. I find this rather confusing. Simbad also indicates the bright nebula LBN 604 is near the top edge of my frame a bit left of center. Apparently, it refers to the general glow that fills most of the frame against which the dark nebulae are seen. I certainly don't see anything but this general glow in the area.

With only 40 minutes of data, the field is rather data starved. At the time I imaged this last fall (2010) I was imaging NGC 225 as one of the Herschel 400 objects, another project I have running. Consulting my visual log of the Herschel 400 I saw no mention of nebulosity nor had I heard of vdB4 until I later saw Tom Davis' wide angle view of the area showing a lot of dark and bright nebulae. By then it was too late and with nothing but clouds and poor seeing this fall I decided to go with what I had rather than try for more data. I was surprised how well vdB4 itself came through. Sometimes I get lucky.

When I went to process this I found that I'd hit a wrong key in setting up the imaging file and ended up with the red frame binned 2x2 rather than 3x3 as the green and blue images were binned. Thanks to normalization it didn't cause any problems. Just added a minor step in the processing.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' R=2x10' GB=2x10'x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC225

NGC2251

NGC 2251 is a type III2p open cluster in Monoceros about 2 degrees southwest of the much better known Cone Nebula and 3.5 degrees north of the Rosette Nebula. It gets lost in the many objects in the area that attract imagers. As a result, there aren't many amateur images of this cluster. Also, it is a rather spread out, elongated cluster. WEBDA puts its age at just under 270 million years. Middle age for a cluster. It is about 4300 light-years away. Its stars are still somewhat blue though the brightest blue stars have long since died. It is little reddened so stars with some blue still predominate. Though some images of it so push the color saturation they appear either gaudy blue or red. My visual log of several observations of it don't mention color at all.

Is its elongated shape natural or is it already showing signs of disruption from galactic forces? I didn't find anything on this. It was discovered by William Herschel on December 26, 1783. It is in the original H400 observing program. My log from that with my 10" f/5 at 60X on an average night reads "Large arrowhead shaped open cluster which comes to a sharp point. It points to the southeast. It is easy as a splotch in binoculars or even a small finder. Likely good in a very small scope but rather lost in my 10" due to background stars."

I wasn't going to make an annotated image but then two very faint asteroids were in it that would be hard to find without my pointing them out. They show how poor my night was. Obviously a lot worse than I realized. Neither can be followed its full distance. The brighter starts almost like there's a star at the lower left end of the trail but that's just that within less than a minute conditions went down hill fast. According to the Minor Planet Center the trail should be about 25% longer than seen in my image. The fainter one to the upper left fared even worse with its trail fading out after only about 40% of its length. The last part is very fuzzy so was probably behind a cloud but why didn't the other one get fuzzy? The mysteries of imaging at work. Color data was hurt by these clouds to the point that I took much of it nearly a month later. I should have totally reshot it that night but then I'd have missed these asteroids -- but were others in the field? I didn't check.

3 or 4 faint star-like galaxies can be seen through the gunk. None had redshift data and were harder to see than the asteroids so I didn't annotate them. They are bright enough they should have been easy but not under these conditions. There was a lot of haze over the brighter stars due to the conditions. I processed most of it out. That likely reduced the brightness range of the stars. Another reason I should have retaken it in full. I should mention that while 4 of the 6 color frames were taken nearly a month later than the luminance and other two color frames (one blue and one red) it is a testament to the accuracy of the Paramount. NONE of the 10 frames were aligned. Due to the fixed mirror and accuracy of the mount and polar alignment and too few frames to dither I often have no need to align unless the temperature was different. That changes image scale requiring RegiStar to resize rather than align.

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

Related Designations for NGC2251

NGC2264

Each time I clean the hard drive I find old files that have been lost, misplaced and forgotten. This one dates back several years. It was taken with my old filters that had nasty blue halos even on red stars. Not knowing how to deal with them in this image I seem to have filed it in an obscure folder and it was gone. I really should redo this one with far more time and with my new filters that don't have the halo problem. But with this winter's horrid weather that didn't happen. I'll have to go with this salvaged image.

The Cone Nebula is part of a larger nebula involved with a star cluster. The combination is known as NGC 2264 though some say it only applies to the northern part. The cluster, most of which is outside this image is sometimes known as the Christmas Tree Cluster due to its shape. The combination is thought to be about 2500 to 2600 light-years away depending on which source you use. It is located in the constellation of Monoceros which is a unicorn. it was discovered by William Herschel on January 18, 1784. It is in the first H400 program. My log entry with my 10" f/5 at 60x on March 16, 1985, a typical dark sky night, reads; "Nebula best seen around a star on the eastern edge fading away so gradually its edge was impossible to see. I've never been able to see the star cluster as a Christmas tree. Maybe I need to look on December 25 rather than in March."

The nebula also extends north becoming mostly a reflection nebula. This part is commonly known as the "Fox Fur Nebula". Though I don't know how it got its name, it's texture might have had something to do with it. The two are too far apart for me to do in one frame. The two images were taken in 2006 for the Fox Fur Nebula and 2009 for the Cone Nebula. My technique in 2006 both in taking and in processing the data was very flawed. Nor did I take either with the idea of combining them into a mosaic. So while there is a bit of overlap there's just no way to combine them so I'm displaying them separately on this page.

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

Fox Fur Nebula data is the same but for exposure times. L=9x5', RGB=3x5'. 5 minute exposures don't control read noise as well as 10 minute ones do.

Related Designations for NGC2264

NGC2266

NGC 2266 is another Herschel 400 open cluster. William Herschel discovered it on December 7, 1785 with his trusty 20' reflector with an 18.7" mirror. It is located in Gemini 1.8 degrees north of Mebsuta (Epsilon Geminorum). It is about 5 minutes of arc across and 11,000 light-years distant. WEBDA puts its age at 630 million years though APOD and other sources say 1 billion years. Either way, it is a rather unusually old open cluster. It spends most of its time well above or below the galaxy's plane so escapes a lot of the tidal forces that rip apart much younger clusters. The red stars in it give away its age as does the lack of really blue stars. Being well above the plane of the galaxy it is only reddened about 0.1 magnitude.

My notes from March 16, 1985 of it visually in my 10" f/5 at 60x reads; "Large triangular shaped open cluster. A bright slightly curved line of brighter stars defines one side of the triangle. If the brighter stars are ignored the cluster is nearly circular." I assume that curved line is the line of mostly red stars that ends at the white star at the southwestern tip. In my image, it looks triangular no matter if you leave out the brighter stars or not. Otherwise, it seems to fit my visual description quite well.

The bright white star at its southwest edge is listed in The Sky as being 1160 light-years away so is unrelated to the cluster. Many images I found of this cluster online show it as rather blue but it came out virtually white with my color balance. This bothered me until I looked it up and found it is a G0 star. Those are virtually white. So where do so many come up with a blue tint to it?

There are a few galaxies around it. Only one had a redshift listed at NED and that one is a flat galaxy! I've noted it and all galaxies listed in NED even if the rest had no magnitude or distance values. Some were UV sources and very blue. Without spectral data, they may be quasars as they seem to have starlike point spread functions.

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

Related Designations for NGC2266

NGC2282

NGC 2282/IC 2172/vdB 85 is a reflection nebula with an embedded star cluster seen mostly in infrared light. Actually, SIMBAD classifies it as a reflection nebula, NED as a star cluster under the NGC 2282 name and an HII region under the entry BSF 54 (Blitz+Fich+Stark HII regions). NED says IC 2172 doesn't exist. The NGC Project lists it as a reflection nebula under both the IC and NGC numbers. Only SIMBAD lists it as vdB 85. The Sky 6 mislocates vdB 85 about 11 minutes east of NGC 2282! It is located on Monoceros and thought to be about 5500 light-years distant. The cluster contains about 100 stars, a few of which are pre-main-sequence stars. It is thought to be about 5 to 10 million years old. You can read more about this object at http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1997AJ....113.1788H . The nebula was discovered by Edward Barnard on March 3, 1886.

Like much of my imaging for 2012 and 2013 this one was severely damaged by clouds and poor seeing. The color data was especially thin. It is equal to only about 2 minutes of normal color data per channel rather than my normal 20 thanks to the clouds. I tried several times for better data but was thwarted each time. For that reason, much of the emission features around one of the field stars were lost. It had some interesting wings that didn't survive the clouds. I'll try again in 2014 if the weather ever improves (still rotten as I type this). Edit: Never was retaken. Still, this is a rarely imaged nebula that should get a lot more attention than it is given so am putting this out hoping those with better skies will give it a try. Note a check of Tom Davis' vdB site lists it as still to be imaged. http://www.tvdavisastropics.com/astroimages-1_00008e.htm I don't know why it gets such little respect.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10' (one very poor) RGB=2x10' (all very poor), STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Related Designations for NGC2282