NGC 457 discovered by William Herschel in 1787 is an open cluster of stars in the constellation Cassiopeia which has many names; Owl Cluster, ET Cluster, Caldwell 13, Kachina Doll Cluster, Skiing Cluster, and I also call it Johnny Number 5. This open cluster is around 7,900 light-years away from the Sun, and has an estimated age of 21 million years which is relatively young astronomically speaking. The two bright stars in this cluster form the eyes of all the objects people have named it after. One “eye” is a magnitude 5, and the other “eye” is a magnitude 7 making it a little dimmer.
My Observation: I have previously posted a sketch of this cluster back in September of 2011 while using my Astromaster 114EQ telescope. Looking back on the sketch as I write this I definitely need to do a new sketch of NGC 457 and do a comparison between a 4.5″ and a 6″ telescope. I did notice quite a few more stars in the cluster this time around while viewing it, and I also noticed that the star I said had a slight orange color was quite prominent in the new scope, and when I do the sketch I will edit it to show the colors. Viewed and imaged this time around from the same location as the previous view. It also appears that in the image I captured NGC 436 which is at magnitude 8.8 compared to NGC 457’s 6.4 magnitude.
This image is 18 images at 60 seconds a piece and 30 dark frames, ISO 800.
Equipment: Omni XLT 150, CG-4 mount with RA and DEC motor drives, Canon 350D, Intervalometer.