Nights at Melinda Heights

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Distance: 970 Light Years

Magnitude: 7.3

Size: 8 Arc Minutes

Age: 1.5 Million Years

Telescope: Borg 71

Camera: QSI 683

Mount: AP 900

Exposure: L 19×420 Bin 1, RGB 30×210 Bin2

IC 348 is an open star cluster surrounded by two small reflection nebula LBN 758 and LBN 601. It is set in a region of both emission and dark nebula that makes for an interesting wide field image. Between us and IC 348 are the Taurus and Perseus dark clouds and this provides some reddening of the field. The star cluster contains about 400 stars at an estimated age of 1.5 million years. The distance of 970 light years is based on three separate studies all results within a few light years of each other.

My field of view shows several other objects in addition to IC 348. Several dark nebula are shown and they are listed in Lynd’s Catalog of Dark Nebula (LDN). LDN 1471 is in the upper left of my image. LDN 1468, LDN 1470, and LDN 1472 are just to the lower right of IC 348. B.T. Lynd’s also created a catalog of bright nebula called Lynd’s catalog of Bright Nebula (LBN). Also in my field of view is LBN 749 and it appears as the reddish emission nebula to the right of IC 348.

This image was captured from a dark site on October 9, 2015. The conditions were clear and dry but there were passing high clouds all night. The field of view for this image is 3.6 x 2.8 degrees.