I have no idea what that means, but I couldn't bring myself to just title the post "Messier 56". I'd never seen this globular cluster before Saturday night, but after our club's public outreach gathering, it was in a good position to take some more exposures to test out my ST-8300 CCD camera.

It was quite humid, but I was able to get 18 three-minute exposures before I started to get condensation forming on the front of the CCD's sensor window (working with SBIG over that). This is only luminence data, as the dewing problem kept me from even trying to get any RGB images. So, black & white is all I've got.

Messier 56 is a small Globular Star Cluster in the constellation of Lyra and just a short star hop from the famous Ring Nebula, Messier 57. This cluster was first cataloged in 1779 by Charles Messier. It is about 84 light-years across and lies at a distance of about 33,000 light-years.

Image Stats:
Astro-Tech AT106L (106mm Apo triplet) w/ AT field flattener
ST-80 w/Starshoot Autoguider
CGE Mount
SBIG ST-8300M w/ FW5 (Baader filters) @ -5C
18 X 180 seconds (54 minutes)
No calibration

Click the thumbnails to view the full-size versions:

First, here's the full frame:

Here is a crop of about the center 40% of the image: