The intermediate star cluster NGC 3330 is actually quite intriguing in the lack of references around it.

Specifically the lack of references on SIMBAD and Wikipedia. There actually were plenty of Wikipedia articles regarding this star cluster, just not in English. So the French article states that it was first discovered on April 29 1826 by James Dunlop, which is almost exactly 2 centuries ago. This open cluster belongs to the Vela (or Voiles in French) constellation system.

To observe this cluster I observed it under B, R, and V telescope filters using the Skynet Observatory Prompt6 telescope and collected total 15 exposures to analyze and use. To create the featured image I had stacked the B exposures in a blue color, the R exposures in a red, and the V exposures in a green to result in the images below.

This is with all 3 stacks fit into one.

Just from visually observing, the cluster looks quite sparse which is characteristic of its age. After uploading the photometry data collected from my observations I was able to use the Cluster Astromancer to determine some key values listed below.

Distance: 1.53 (kpc)

E(B-V): 0.29 (mag)

Log of age: 7.05 (yrs)

Metallicity: -0.8 (solar)

Of which values resulted in this RP vs RP-BP comparison plot:

What’s more interesting to look at however is this R vs R-B plot that reveals some blue stragglers in the bottom left and a clear horizontal branch towards them.

When observed by John Herschel in 1834, he stated that it was “a poor cluster of 20-30 stars” which in comparison to my findings is a wildly different value than the amount of plots I have on my graphs. From the MWSC, this cluster was also studied by Kharchenko et al(2013) and revealed their values which were:

Distance: 0.894 (kpc)

E(B-V): 0.050 (mag)

Log of age: 8.229 (yrs)

Metallicity: -0.474 (solar)

Which appears to be quite the drastic difference. Here is a plotted RP vs BP-RP graph of their values compared to mine.

And another to compare the R vs R-B plots:

Even with the drastic differences in all 4 of our varied values, the curves still look very similar. Comparing them side by side does make me lean towards my own values more purely based on the observation that mine do not have an overhang above the real curve where no stars reside and both our actual curves match pretty closely.

What I found most interesting was the facts that Herschel stated that there were only 20-30 stars in the cluster which is not very many even by open-cluster standards which seem to average at least in the hundreds.

In retrospect, this cluster was very interesting to analyze considering the difference in values I got compared to the MWSC, the unique 20-30 star population, and the general lack of references towards this particular cluster. I also had fun trying to decipher information from the varied Wikipedia articles regarding the cluster that had about 10 different versions with varied languages except English. Maybe if I was more confident in my first year introductory astronomy knowledge I might have even tried to make the English page myself!