The History of NGC 2925.

NGC 2925 is a young cluster found in the Vela constellation in the southern hemisphere. It was discovered in 1837, by British mathematician, astronomer, and photographer Sir John Fredrick William Herschel, founder of the Royal Astronomical Society and son of Sir William Fredrick Herschel. NGC 2925 is approximately 774 parsec ( or ~2,520 light years) from our Solar System.

The Special Facts About NGC 2925.

After hours of searching the internet for information about NGC 2925 I came to the conclusion that not much is known about this star cluster. Perhaps this is what makes it special as it is still shrouded in mystery since its discovery. All I know is it is a relatively young star when compared to other clusters and is quite unusual as shown by my charts below. I compare my charts to my peers and I am left baffled at how peculiar mine looks.

The Process of Studying NGC 2925.

To study NGC 2925 and investigate the relationships between the colours, brightnesses, ages, and chemical compositions of the cluster as a whole, I scheduled Skynet’s Robotic Telescope named Prompt 6 to take 15 images. I set the telescope to use 3 different filters B, V, and R. They had exposure durations of 47.24, 23.62, and 12.6 seconds. After acquiring the photos I used Skynet’s Afterglow Workbench to analyze and enhance my photos. With it I attained a photometry file and high quality coloured pictures of NGC 2925. I then used Skynet’s Cluster Astromancer to refine the location of my cluster, pull data from other catalogues, and isochrone match my data.

The Results of Studying NGC 2925.

I found that NGC 2925 has a star count of 404 stars, has a mass of 1080 solar masses, has a physical radius of 26.3846 light years, has a right ascension of 143.27 degrees, has a declination -53.34 degrees, has galactic longitude of  95.88619 degrees, has galactic latitude -1.22143 degrees, has angular radius 0.193124 degrees, has pmr ra of -4 (mas/yr), has pm dec 3.24 (mas/yr), has velocity dispersion of 0.112586 (mas/yr), has a log age of 9.15 million years, and metallicity -0.3 (solar).

Conclusion.

NGC 2925 is quite an unusual star cluster. The form it took on my charts were significantly different from other charts of other star clusters. On top of this, in the pictures Prompt 6 took, it is not evident that there is a star cluster within the pictures. When compared to Messier 2 NGC 2925 does not resemble a star cluster at all. However, this is because I believe NGC 2925 is a open star cluster. Other than that there isn’t much that pops out in NGC 2925. The challenge of NGC 2925 was the unusual shape it took form in my chart, the lack of information we know about it, and how it does not look, at first, like a typical star cluster.

Epilogue. 

Overall, this cluster project was quite fun and inspiring! Working with Skynet’s Robotic Telescopes is always very satisfying and enhancing photos using Afterglow’s tools is something I feel I appreciate differently than others, since I do photography as my hobby. I specialize in close up photography on my Instagram @a_random_abe. Seeing photos of my NGC 2925 inspired me to perhaps work on other styles of photography one day. Perhaps, I will upload some of the photos I captured using Skynet and share them to my family and friends.