M46 & NGC 2438

When most kids' teachers were sending home notes to the the parents saying, "he's got plenty of brains, but just won't apply himself," my teachers were saying, "he likes the astronomy sections, but he just doesn't care enough about open clusters." I've carried this stigma my entire life.

However, as Scott has pointed out, open cluster M46 comes with a truly cracker-jack prize inside-NGC 2438, yet another of those stars like our own that has decided that enough is enough. This is a VERY early set of subs, and most of the stars in the cluster really aren't even visible, but I'm a sucker for those lovely little blue splotches. Indeed; they are some of the few objects that look similar in a camera AND an eyepiece. So I'll try and grab some more subs of M46 before it's too late in the year; it's already setting pretty close to dusk as it is. There is another Messier object just one degree to the west of this one, M47...but seriously, who gets excited about 17 stars in a single field of view? I mean, I could have taken a photo if I'd felt like it. But I was getting ready to shoot a fresh set of subs of a proper target, M101. So I spent 45 minutes getting the focus exactly right, shooting my flat frames, really fine-tuning the position of the counterweights...when in a 2 minute period, the entire sky clouded over. And it now looks like we'll have heavy clouds and rain for a few days. And ya know what? I still don't feel bad about skipping those shots of M47. Bloody open clusters.

In my defense, I might point out that while the exact distances aren't really known, NGC 2438 has a different angular velocity from M46, and therefore isn't really a part of that cluster anyway...