NGC 225 is an open cluster in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is located roughly 2,200 light-years from Earth. It is about 100 to 150 million years old. The binary fraction, or the fraction of stars that are multiple stars, is 0.52. It is also known as sailboat cluster. But what's happening at the top of the mast? The boat is obviously being boarded by an octopus - the more clearer, the longer you expose (or if you drink too much red wine)... Beside the quite nice, probably not so well known star cluster you can see interesting dust clouds and a reflection nebula, which are cataloged as LDN 1291 and LBN 604.

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M13 ist probably one of the most well known globular clusters of the northern hemisphere and very simple to find in the constellation Hercules. When it is comfortably warm in the northern hemisphere in spring and early summer the cluster stands high in the sky and is a popular object for observation. For its high stellar density and apparent brightness astronomical photographers often choose it as a reference object to test a new optical setup for its image quality. This was my major motivation for this image, too. In the end the result was convincing and I chose to present it on this page.

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