Double Cluster

The Double Cluster (NGC 869 and NGC 884) are open clusters between the head of Perseus and the knee of Cassiopeia, technically in Perseus. They are visible to the naked eye using averted vision (Averted vision is a technique for viewing faint objects which uses peripheral vision. It involves not looking directly at the object, but looking a little off to the side, while continuing to concentrate on the object.). In the image below the clusters are towards the horizontal center of the frame.

In Perseus

North (toward Polaris) is up in the photo. The picture was taken with a fully modified Canon Rebel camera (this is my one shot color camera) on a TEC 140 telescope in the Alpenglow-Torrey House Observatory in the dark sky community of Torrey, Utah (Bortle 2-3).

A USB camera wire came loose in the observatory, which my wife Kirsten fixed.

The 12 best of 14 90-second sub-frames were used and stacked in Deep Sky Stacker = 18 minute photo. Unguided, binned 2X2 in the SkyX (to make smaller files for internet transfer), no calibration frames. Processed in Photoshop (CS5).

Location in the night sky of the photo:

source: Astrometry.net

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