Mall Astrophotography

December 1, 1999

Since M15 seemed to work OK, I thought I'd try a couple more Messier objects. I was going to shoot the 3 open clusters in Auriga (M36, M37, M38) but the AutoStar started acting up - low batteries, I think - and so I ended up wasting a whole lot of time before I gave up and plugged in the standard paddle. Anyway, here's M36:

m36

By the time I had that done, Orion was coming up and I couldn't resist M42:

M42

While messing with this picture, I made a false color close-up of the central part to show some more of the detail:

m42 core

At this point it was late and I was freezing. I'll get to the other clusters another day.