NGC 2439 is a young, open cluster of 824 stars in the Southern constellation Puppis. It was catalogued by Per Collinder in 1931 and has unusually low extinction leading some to argue that the cluster doesn’t exist at all Kaltcheva 2001.

In order to study NGC 2439 I collected 15 images using the Prompt6 telescope, in B, V and R filters (5 images in each filter), with 51, 36 and 21 second exposures respectively, through the Skynet telescope network. I then used afterglow to stack, photometer and color the images and Cluster Astronomancer to remove field stars and build an isocrome model for the cluster.

Combining the information from my images with the data from Gaia DR3 i was able to effectively model the cluster and determine its age, distance, metalicity, and reddening.

This differs from the values recorded by the Kharchenko et al 2013 survey.

	Kharchenko et al	Zimmerman
Age (Log[yr])	7.25	7.7
Distance (kpc)	3.83	3.73
Metalicity (solar units)	N/A	0.05
Reddening (mag)	0.437	0.46

 

The cluster contains a red giant and a white giant, but is mostly composed of young, supper hot, blue main-sequence stars, which is nice because i think they’re neat.

Having completed my analysis I feel exhausted, and although I have learned a lot about astronomy, especially things I have been curious about for a long time like the lifecycle of stars, I feel like it will be at least a month before the thought of stargazing will bring me calm and enjoyment instead of the stress and anxiety of weekly assignments. with that said i’m sure i’ll be able to appreciate the stars far more now that I understand the universe just a little bit better and my memories of this course will hopefully soften as the stress subsides.