Astronomy Adventure – Craters And An Open Cluster

As Charles Pierce would say, it’s always a good day for astrophotography. Here is a photo of what I believe is the crater Encke on the lower right with the peak rising in the middle of the crater and the crater Kepler in the middle right on the terminator. You can sense how steep Kepler’s walls are as almost the entire crater is lost in shadow as compared to Encke.

And here is a bonus picture of the open cluster Messier 35 in the constellation Gemini. Tracking was a little bit off, but you can get a sense of just how magnificent this cluster is. Under dark skies, it is a naked eye object that was originally “discovered” around 1750. The cluster is reasonably close to us at just under 3,000 light years away.

Photo details:

Scope: Starblast 4.5
Moon Photo:
   Camera: iPhone 6 using NightCapPro with low ISO boost on
   Magnification: ~140x;
   Exposure: 1/50 sec?
M35 Photo:
   Camera: iPhone 6 using NightCapPro with high ISO boost on
   Magnification: ~25x;
   Exposure: 15 secs.