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July 15, 2018 - Location: Denton, TX Telescope: ATRC12 Mount: MI-250 Camera: ST-10XME Exposure: Lum = 100 min. R G & B = 60 min. each - 10 min. Sub-exposures Guided using Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider (ONAG) Click on the image below to view at higher resolution. |
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NGC 7142 is an open cluster of stars in the constellation Cepheus the King. Reddening due to obscuring interstellar clouds makes determination of the cluster's distance and age difficult to accurately ascertain. Most estimates put the distance at approximately 6,200 light-years. The age of the cluster, based on its Color-Magnitude Diagram, is believed to be between 3 and 5 billion years. This would place it among the oldest known clusters in the Milky Way. For a cluster of this age, NGC 7142 has a surprisingly large number of "blue" stars. Bluer stars tend to be massive and short lived. Such stars should have burned through their fuel and died early in the cluster's history. It is believed the a high number of the blue stars are the result of interaction and merger of older stars that produced objects known as blue stragglers.
Member of the Dark Sky Observatory Collaborative
1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_7142
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