Lorenzo Comolli's Astronomy HomePage

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The Southern sky is wonderful and filled with any kind of splendors that us, Northern hemisphere observers, cannot even imagine! But the Southern counterpart of Pleiades is an exception, as the stars are dimmer and without any surrounding nebula. Nevertheless an apparent magnitude of 1.9 is notable. And a nice and compact open cluster (Melotte 101, below) is able to counterbalance the absence of a nebula. Furthermore the background is filled with dark nebulae in front of the Milky Way stars of Carina.

Technical Data
Optics	Pentax 75 apo refractor
Focal Lenght	500 mm
Focal Ratio	f/6.7
Exposure Time	40 min (single exp of 10 min)
CCD	Canon EOS 5D with Baader filter
Sensitivity	800 ISO
Location	Tivoli Farm (Namibia) at 1350 m height
Date	2 September 2011
Mount	Kenko NES
Tracking	Lodestar at 100 mm focal length
Temperature and humidity	T= 9°C, RH=21%
Sky brightness at zenith (with SQM-L)	21.3 mag/arcsec^2 (very high Moon!)
Notes	This cluster was imaged as a filler because the first part of the night was penalized by a very bright Moon high in the sky. So the SQM read only 21.3... This image is a collaborative effort of the Namibia 2011 expedition. Processing: Lorenzo Comolli. Images by: Lorenzo Comolli, Luigi Fontana, Giosuè Ghioldi, Emmanuele Sordini.