Messier Catalog Collection

Among the easier objects to photograph are the objects in the Messier catalog.  Although I have been imaging Messier objects all along, I've been pretty selective in the past as to which ones I wanted to image.  Up until a couple of nights ago, I've imaged 8 nebulae, 12 galaxies, 7 globular clusters and one open cluster.

As you can see, I was lacking open clusters.  It's too bad that I havent discovered open clusters until now.  Some of them are very nice imaging candidates.  I've also applied a little creative licensing and synthesized spikes on some of the star images, and  it seems it really makes a semi-dull starfield come alive.  Over the last 2 days, I imaged 9 open cluster Messier's and 2 more globular clusters.  I'll post the open clusters first:

M35

M36

M37

M38

M29

M34

M39

M52

M103

Then there are the 2 globular clusters, M2 and M15.

M2

M15

 

These objects were imaged with a bright gibbous moon high in the sky.  Being these are stars, the moon does not seem to affect them too much.  The globulars might be a different story, if one wants to get the faintest of stars near the outside of the glob, but the open clusters seem to fare pretty well.  This will show that these clusters would also be good targets for urban astronomers as well, being the light pollution should have little effect on the quality of these objects.

I have created a link to my catalog collection.  The link is at the top of the page, which will take you off-site to my album on a server operated by one of our local astronomy club members.