Messier 67 and Messier 44 contrasting Open Star Clusters in the constellation Cancer

Messier 67 COAST Robotic Telescope Mount Teide Tenerife -BVR Filters - Credit: telescope.org - Open University and Pip Stakkert

Messier 44 - The Beehive Cluster - 127mm Meade Apo Refractor and Canon 400D DSLR - Credit: Kurt Thrust

" Both these interesting open star clusters in the constellation Cancer may be seen with binoculars from a dark site. Messier 44 may be viewed with the naked eye. Messier 67 is estimated to be 2,600 to 2,900 light years distant and between 3.2 and 5 billion years old. Messier 44 is estimated to be very much nearer at 520 to 610 light years and approximately 600 million years old. M 67 has an apparent magnitude of 6.1(just on the edge of visibility with the naked eye) and
 M 44 has an apparent magnitude of 3.7(and should be easily seen).

Messier 44 does have some  red giant and white dwarf stars and Messier 67 does have some anomalous blue stragglers but the above images clearly demonstrate the dominance of older red stars in Messier 67 and a similar dominance of Messier 44 by younger blue stars. It is worth noting that even though M 67 is one of the oldest open star clusters visible in our galaxy, the average age of its stars are less than the age of our Sun. Open star clusters contain stars that were created in a shared stellar nursery and from the collapse one molecular gas cloud. The stars are held together in the cluster by gravity but over time they are inevitably disrupted by the gravitational affects of matter outside the cluster and subsequently scattered throughout the galactic disk. The estimated mass of M 67 is 1080 solar masses and M 44 has an estimated mass between 500 and 600 solar masses. Distance, as they say, does lend enchantment, so the lower mass M 44 appears much larger to the eye than M 67 when viewed from the Earth. M 44 has an apparent dimension of 95 arc minutes and M 67 has an apparent dimension of 30 arc minutes". - Karl Seguine - Community outreach coordinator - Jodrell Plank Observatory

Credit:Wikipedia

Edge on Spiral Galaxies NGC891 and NGC4565

NGC891 - 30 million light years distant in the constellation Andromeda taken with the PIRATE Robotic telescope - BVR filters - on Mount Teide in September 2018. Credit telescope.org - Open University and Pip Stakkert.

Infra red image - Hubble Space Telescope -Image credit: By Torsten Boeker, Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) , and NASA - http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1999/10/image/d/ (direct link), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6222893

 "Both these edge on galaxies can be seen as small elongated smudges of light with a small telescope from the northern hemisphere. The images show both the central bulge of stars and the dust running through the plane of the disc"- Kurt Thrust acting CEO and current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

NGC4565 - 30 to 50 million light years distant in the constellation Coma Berenices taken with the COAST Robotic telescope  - BVR filters - on Mount Teide in November 2017. Credit telescope.org - Open University and Pip Stakkert.

Great Orion Molecular Cloud - Messier 42

Messier 42-The Great Orion Molecular Cloud - Combination of two images taken with the PIRATE and COAST Robotic Telescopes using BVR filters- Credit: telescope.org - Open University. and Pip Stakkert.

" The above image is the result of combining two images taken with the robotic telescopes on Mount Teide, Tenerife, back in January 2018. Pip Stakkert has taken great care to not bleach out the young hot Trapezium stars at the heart of the nebula. Messier 42 is a stellar nursery and  one of the great northern hemisphere show pieces of the night sky." - Kurt Thrust acting CEO and current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

                               

Messier 41 an open star cluster in the constellation Canis Major - Image taken with the PIRATE Robotic Telescope back in March 2018. Credit: telescope.org - Open University and Pip Stakkert.

"Not far from the constellation Orion lies the constellation Canis Major and the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere sky Alpha Canis Major also known as Sirius. 

Messier 41 lies approximately 4 degrees south of Sirius. The open cluster contains some 100 stars and has a diameter of  25 to 26 light years. The cluster has a number of red giant and white dwarf stars and has an estimated age of 190 million years.  M41 or NGC2287 is 2300 light years distant and is moving away from us at 23.3 km/sec." - Archie Mendes - visiting theoretical astronomer at the Jodrell Plank Observatory - Reydon University - 'School of Computer Modelling and Difficult Sums' 

" The staff of the Jodrell Plank Observatory wish to acknowledge the work and passing of the Opportunity Mars Rover. The little rover exceeded its life expectancy and worked in the inhospitable conditions of the martian surface from January 2004 until June 10 2018. Well done Opportunity, NASA and all involved" - Community outreach coordinator – Karl Seguine

Credit: Wikipedia

Red 'Hyper giants and Carbon Stars'

Herschel's Garnet Star Mu Cephei Spectral type M21a - Credit: The COAST Robotic Telescope - BVR filters - The Open University - telescope. org. Image Credit: Pip Stakkert

 Mu Cephei  is also known as Herschel's Garnet Star and is a red supergiant or hypergiant star in the constellation Cepheus. It appears garnet red and is located at the edge of the IC 1396 nebula. Since 1943, the spectrum of this star has served as the M2 Ia standard by which other stars are classified.

Mu Cephei is visually nearly 100,000 times brighter than the Sun, with an absolute visual magnitude of −7.6. It is also one of the largest known stars with an estimated radius over 1,000 times that of the sun, and were it placed in the Sun's position its stellar radius would reach to between the orbit of Jupiter and Saturn.- Credit Wikipedia

Hind's Crimson Star - R Leporis Spectral Type C7,6e. The COAST Robotic Telescope - BVR filters - The Open University - telescope. org. Image Credit: Pip Stakkert

R Leporis (R Lep), sometimes called Hind's Crimson Star, is a well-known variable star in the constellation Lepus, near its border with Eridanus. It is designated "R"

It is a carbon star which appears distinctly red. It is named after famous British astronomer J. R. Hind, who observed it in 1845. Its apparent magnitude varies from +5.5 to +11.7 with a period of 418–441 days; recent measurements give a period of 427.07 days. There may be a secondary period of 40 years.  It has been estimated to be around 1,350 light-years distant, shining with a luminosity approximately 6,689 times that of the Sun and with a surface temperature of 2,980 K.[8]

R Leporis has often been reported as an intense smoky red colour, although this is not pronounced when the star is near its maximum brightness. It is reddest when it is dimmest, which occurs every 14.5 months. The red coloration may be caused by carbon in the star's outer atmosphere filtering out the blue part of its visible light spectrum.- Credit Wikipedia

" Mixed in with ordinary GK and M stars (covering a temperature range from 4600 to 3100 degrees K) are Carbon or C stars. They are cool giant stars that are over abundant in carbon relative to oxygen. Under the old Harvard stellar classification these were divided into the hotter 'R' stars with spectral bands of (C2) and bands of cyanogen (CN) and cooler 'N' stars exhibiting (C2), (CN) and (CH) with very little (TiO) evident.

Both the 'Garnet Star' and the 'Crimson Star' are variable stars.  Indeed, most low temperature stars exhibit some form of variability in their luminosity and energy output. The 'Garnet Star' is a 'Cepheid' variable, one of an important group of variable stars used in estimating distances to remote star systems. The relationship between the period of pulsation for variable stars and their luminosity was discovered by the modest and admirable Miss Henrietta Swan Leavitt and was used by Edwin Hubble to first establish the distance to The Andromeda Galaxy M31 . This was the first proof that the Universe went on outside the confines of the Milky Way.

In 1912 Miss Leavitt, working at Harvard, found that the brighter the median apparent magnitude (and so luminosity since the stars are at the same distance) the longer the period of the Cepheid variable star.  Harlow Shapley realised the importance of the period- luminosity relationship and attempted to find the 'zero-point' in order that a knowledge of the period of a Cepheid would immediately determine its luminosity. This calibration was difficult to perform because of the relative scarcity of Cepheids within range of distance determinations to allow trigonometric parallax observations. Instead, Shapley depended upon the relatively inaccurate method of statistical parallax. His zero point was then used to find the distances to many other galaxies. As time has passed more accurate  data has become available which has enabled more reliable distances to some 20 or more stars which serve as calibrators for the period-luminosity relationship in the Milky Way"

- Archie Mendes - visiting theoretical astronomer at the Jodrell Plank Observatory - Reydon University - 'School of Computer Modelling and Difficult Sums' - author of "Quantity Surveying and Standard Methods of Measurement in Curved Space Time" or "When the Socks come off!" – Greek National

NGC 2146 - Barred Spiral Galaxy in the Constellation Camelopardalis

NGC 2146 Barred Spiral Galaxy in the Constellation Camelopardalis. Credit: COAST Robotic Telescope - Mount Teide Tenerife Open University-telescope.org 

"It has a diameter of 80,000 light years  The galaxy's most conspicuous feature is the dusty lanes of a spiral arm lying across the core of the galaxy as seen from Earth, the arm having been bent 45 degrees by a close encounter with a smaller galaxy possibly NGC 2146a about 0.8 billion years ago. This close encounter is credited with the relatively high rates of star formation that qualify NGC 2146 as a starburst galaxy", Credit : Wikipedia

 Type 11 Supernova SN2018zd in NGC 2146 Barred Spiral Galaxy in the Constellation Camelopardalis. Credit: COAST Robotic Telescope - Mount Teide Tenerife Open University-telescope.org 

Inverted greyscale enlargement showing the Supernova - originally discovered on the 7th March 2018 by Koichi  Itagaki

" Just before Christmas, Pip Stakkert requested that the COAST Robotic Telescope on Mount Teide should take a snap shot of this interesting 'starburst' galaxy and the above image was captured at 3:30 am. on the 26th December 2018. The capture used BVR filters and a single exposure of 3 minutes. 

A Type 11 supernova occurs when a massive star, one with a mass between 8 and fifty times the mass of our sun, undergoes a rapid collapse as gravity overcomes the outward thermal pressure created by the nuclear fusion process at its core and the degeneracy pressure of electrons. The net result of the collapse is a massive explosion that may be seen across the vast distances which separate galaxies.

NGC 2146 is estimated to be a staggering 70 million light years distant from our home galaxy.

This distance equates approximately to to 76,622,511,300,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilometres". - Kurt Thrust acting CEO and current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Hot Plastic at the Jodrell Plank Observatory

3d Printer completed on time and within budget - Credit: Jolene McSquint-Fleming - Observatory Instrumentation Engineer and Associate Astronomer 

" Does anyone know how to turn it on"?  -  Anita Roberts - Observatory Friend and Sponsor