I got a handful of images of M35 the other night. This is a beautiful open star cluster in the constellation Gemini (The Twins). This object is beautiful in even the most modest of telescopes. More aperture reveals a never ending number of fainter stars throughout the entire cluster. Smaller telescopes and binoculars however, may miss the nearby but much fainter NGC 2158 pictured to the left of the main cluster. At mag 8.6, the doesn’t just jump right out at you. My 6″ shows this in a subtle way, whereas my 25″ makes even this faint cluster look pretty impressive. If you find yourself under clear skies, be sure to look for the two bright stars of Castor and Pollux. The twin stars of gemini are at the head, whereas M35 is down near the leading foot. Checkout this star chart of Gemini for help in finding the cluster.

This image was constructed from (5) 60 second exposures at ISO400. As usual, I was shooing with the Canon Digital Rebel XTi at prime focus through my Astro Physics Starfire 160. For some reason, perhaps the location in the sky, tracking was much better than normal. I’ve not allocated the proper amount of time to make tracking a complete non-issue. I’m still limited to 60-120 seconds before star trailing becomes unacceptable. As the phase of the moon grows in the days ahead (and if/when clear skies return to Park City), I hope to finish this off once and for all.

These images were stacked using RegiStax 4 and were then manipulated inside PhotoShop. I used the levels function to set the black point appropriately and then used the Curves function to bring out some of the fainter details. I had to pull this into The Gimp, because on my Windows Vista machine, many of my software applications provide only limited and/or sporadic functionality. I’m currently in the process of upgrading to Ubuntu Linux. This should alleviate the multitude of pains I’ve been suffering through these last several Vista-Inflicted months. For those of you who are not familiar with it, The Gimp is a full featured, FREE, image processing software package. It is comparable to the pricey Adobe Photoshop in many ways. As I’m not familiar enough with either of these packages, I’m currently unable to give a good comparison. Anyway, its free and highly functional.

I mentioned previously that I’ve been reading through Ron Wodaski and Russ Croman’s Zone System for Astro Imaging book. This (still a read in progress) has given me a much better understanding of the principles needed to develop high caliber astro-images. It’s amazing to see details that I’d otherwise miss come into clear view by applying these principles. This book is a must read for the aspiring or experienced astro photographer.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: M35
* Type: Open Star Cluster
* Constellation: Gemini
* Magnitude: 5.1
* Size: 30′
* Open Star Cluster NGC2158 appears to the upper left

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* Astro Physics Refractor
* 5 x 60s exposures at ISO400
* Stacked using RegiStax 4
* Neat Image
* Photo Shop Levels & Curves