Messier Objects - M93

A Messier object in Puppis is M93.  M93 is an open cluster located nearly 25° below the celestial equator and will only be visible at northern latitudes for a brief amount of time each year.  I initially had a bit of trouble finding the cluster.  I thought I would star hop from η Canis Majoris through L Puppis to ξ Puppis.  A side note on the Bayer designation of stars should be mentioned.  When Bayer ran out of Greek letters to designate stars he moved onto Latin letters, thus L Puppis.

I mapped out the route through the binoculars and tried through the finderscope on the telescope.  There are many stars in that region and I kept getting lost.  I then realized that I could actually see ξ Puppis with my naked eye.  After this realization I merely used the red dot finder to center the telescope on it.  M93 is a mere 1.5° away from ξ Puppis so it was just the matter of moving the telescope a field of view northwest.

There it was: M93, a small dense cluster of stars.  I measured it to be only 10' in size but the accepted value is closer to 22'.  This may be due to the fact the dimmer stars in the cluster were drowned out by the light pollution endemic to urban regions.  I estimated there to be around 100 stars whereas the accepted value is around 80.  This is counter intuitive to my argument about light pollution.  I will once again revisit this cluster and try to measure the size more accurately.  I'm hoping that knowing the true value does not bias my eyes, but I'm sure it will.

The observing record for M93 is shown below.

M93 Observing Record

The sky cleared up on another night and I was able to image the cluster.  Fortunately it was bright enough to take a lower exposure time and the stars didn't blur too much.  I am hoping to retake some of these pictures next year when I have more experience with autoguiding and with a focal reducer equipped.  My image of M93 is shown below.

M93

Keep your eyes in the sky to behold the wonders above!