Caldwell 76 open cluster in Scorpius

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

Caldwell 76 is an open cluster in the southern sky in the constellation Scorpius and is only 150 lightyears from Earth.
Taken with the Slooh 17" Planewave in Chile.

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

I am going to redo this as the color in the cluster is not right

[Ben Cartwright SASS]

Here is the first redo, still not happy with it,but it matches many more images I have seen of C76

[Graeme1858]

Lovely cluster!

Regards

Graeme

[messier 111]

diamond in the sky , thx .

[kt4hx]

Excellent image of a simply beautiful cluster. NGC 6231 is a delightful cluster visually as well when seen from a location where it gains some elevation. Below are my notes of an observation from a location just south of the equator using my ES ED80 refractor from May 2016. There I was observing it at an elevation of about 53° versus the paltry 8° I get at our dark site at home. Thank you for highlighting it!


NGC 6231 (Scorpius, mag=2.6, size=14.0’):

Putting the Rigel Quikfinder on the wide pair of Zeta1 (mag 4.9) and Zeta2 (mag 3.6) Scorpii, I was immediately greeted by the beautiful sight of his bright and impressive cluster. Known colloquially as the Northern Jewel Box, I find it more attractive than its southern counterpart in Crux. Interestingly, the IDSA plots it with the nickname of Baby Scorpion Cluster, which I found more appropriate. Even at 27x, my eye easily picked up a little box of stars that could be the little scorpling’s body, with a curved line of stars its tail and even a line or two that could be tiny pinchers. The cluster seemed to have a particularly lustrous appearance as its stars shone like brilliant little diamonds. I suppose that is where the reference to a jewel box comes into play. Looking at it using 43x and 71x, it was simply alive with little sparklers of fire with over 30 stars counted. Now this is what open cluster observing is all about! We wade through many a mundane cluster to pay our dues then we are rewarded with this amazing feast for the eye. It was quite compressed and strongly detached from the field, which was generally rich in and of itself. I highly recommend this cluster to anyone who can see it elevated enough to get a good look. It is a true beauty.