M38 is an open cluster in the constellation Auriga. This open cluster is around 6.4 magnitude and a distance of 4,200 light years from earth and a diameter of about 25 light years. M38, also known as the Starfish Cluster or the Pi Cluster is estimated to be around 220 million years old.
This is a heavily populated cluster even at around 64x magnification. With all the stars in this field of view it can get hard remember which stars you placed where. There were so many bright stars that I was having a hard time finding the dimmer hard to see objects. Even after a year of doing sketching at the eyepiece I have nights where I feel like I'm just not seeing everything I could. I'd blame my issues on it being too cold, but considering this sketch was done on January 9th the temperature was pretty warm at 25F.
 |
| Open Cluster M38 in the constellation Auriga |
Some of the dimmer stars within the cluster looked like a glowing area rather than resolvable stars. I tried to represent that in areas with the blending stump, and also used the blending stump to try to give the brighter stars a bit of a glow effect to represent how much brighter they appeared compared to other stars in this field of view.
If you'd like to see where this object is located in the night sky along with a time lapse video of me doing this sketch at the eyepiece be sure to check out the video:
Comments