Messier 30 and 72

Messier 30

Messier 72

After a long summer without much deep sky imaging, I began again my slow march through the 110 Messier objects on Saturday evening (current total is 66).  Messier 30 and 72 are two notable globular clusters that have been hovering in the Southern sky as Mars puts on its own show.  M30 lies about 30,000 light years from us and is about 100 light years across.  It's interesting that when Charles Messier first observed M30, he was not able to observe individual stars.  Today, with modern equipment, we can clearly see countless stars, many of which are "blue stragglers."    M72 appears much smaller as seen above, but it's due to a greater distance from us (about 58,000 light years).  In fact, M72 and M30 are approximately the same size across.

Photo Details

November 3, 2018

Orion 8" Astrograph on VX Mount

SBIG STF-8300C Camera

Baader MPC Mark III Multi-Purpose Coma Corrector

Skyglow filter
M30 - 5 subframes @ 3 minutes/frame = 15 mins total exposure
M72 - 11 subframes @ 3 minutes/frame = 33 mins total exposure

Image Acquisition in CCDOps
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop