About Image:

The Northern Owl Star Cluster — beautiful gems 💎 in space.
Where do these stunning star clusters come from? How do they form?
Unlike a single dying star that leaves behind a small planetary nebula, these massive clusters are born inside giant cosmic nurseries. Deep inside huge clouds of cold molecular hydrogen gas, gravity pulls the material together until thousands of sibling stars ignite at the exact same time. Over millions of years, the stellar winds blow the leftover gas away, leaving behind a brilliant, glittering cluster of cosmic jewels for us to image from our backyards.

Equipment & Details:

Optics: Orion 8” inch 3.9f Newtonian astrograph

Camera: Canon 60D DSLR unmoddified

Mount: Celestron AVX

Guiding: Orion starshoot autoguider 60mm guide scope

Date: September-2022

Location: Clarksdale Missouri

Exposures: Lights-98 with 3-minutes subs, total 4 hours 54 minutes

Processing: Pixlnsight, Photoshop CS5