Auriga

pic of M37

This picture was taken with a 28mm wide angle lens and shows the southern part of the Milky Way stetching diagonally across the field of view from bottom left to top right. Some of the starts are slightly trailed, especially at the corners. These aren't Saturn's rings you can see, just the result of my incompetence.

Several globular clusters show up - M35/36/37/38 can all be seen with binoculars, while the others are less well known. M37 is shown on the right in more detail. It contains about 150 stars and is around 4600 light years away.

M37, M36 and M38 are also shown in the photograph below. This was taken in December 2004 with a 90mm f/2.5 lens so I was able to get more magnification without risking the stars being trailed.

Main page | Astronomy page

pic of M36/M37/M38