The star cluster NGC 2301 (also known as Hagrid’s Dragon) is an open cluster that is found in the northern constellation Monoceros. It is around 165 million years old, which means that it is an intermediate cluster. Almost all of its stars are on the main sequence, and there are a couple of stars that are starting to reach its turnoff point. There are very few red giants and a couple blue giants.

NGC 2301 was discovered by a man by the name of William Herschel in the year 1786. William Herschel was a British astronomer who was also an accomplished musician. He played the oboe, the violin, and the harpsichord, and also composed 24 symphonies. Alongside discovering NGC 2301, he also discovered NGC 2286 (in 1785) and NGC 2324 (in 1786) which are two open cluster in Monoceros that are very close to NGC 2301.

Studying NGC 2301 proved to be a very interesting endeavor. In order to properly study the cluster, I started by collecting 15 images on Skynet using the Prompt6 telescope in Cerro- Tololo. I took 5 images in the B-band with a duration of 27.56s, 5 images in the V-band with a duration of 19.69s and 5 images in the R-band with a duration of 11.81s. After receiving all of my images, I used Afterglow to photometer the images. This was done by first aligning and stacking all of images in their respective filters. I then photometered those images and uploaded the files to Clustermancer. In Clustermancer, I used the Field Star Removal and the Archive Fetching options to refine the parameters of my cluster. I then moved to the Isochrone Matching and created the following RP vs BP-RP HR Diagram for NGC 2301.

The last part of this cluster analysis involved creating combined color images of NGC 2301 and de-reddening them using the E(B-V) value of 0.13 that I obtained through Isochrone Matching. The following image is the de-reddened image of NGC 2301.

The point of doing all of the above analysis was to determine various parameters of the star cluster NGC 2301. I was able to determine its mass (2035 solar mass units), its physical radius (5.1365 light years), its distance (0.84 kpc), its metallicity (-0.15 solar units) and its reddening E(B-V) value (0.13 mas). As can be seen by the above image, NGC 2301 is a very nice cluster to image as it fits quite well into the field of view of the Prompt6 telescope. There is a large red giant in the middle of the cluster, which can be seen in the HR Diagram as the point that is roughly at (1.25, -3).

The last part of my analysis involved comparing my results with the results that had been obtained previously by the Milky Way Star Clusters Catalogue in the years 2012-2015. Using the parameters that they had obtained for NGC 2301; I created an HR Diagram on my data and then compared the two graphs. The following graph is the isochrone model obtained using the MWSC parameters.

As can be seen, the two graphs are very similar, but my graph is slightly more accurate in terms of the amount of main sequence stars that can be found on the isochrone model. There are a couple parameters that have been poorly estimated and these include the metallicity and reddening parameters. The metallicity value that I obtained was -0.15 while the MWSC had a metallicity value of 0.06. The reddening parameters had similar differences (0.13 vs 0.062).

In all, I think that this project was very interesting and enjoyable to complete. It has given me a new appreciation for the complexities and the intricacies of our universe that is constantly changing.

Here is the link to the page on Astronomicon for NGC 2301: Astronomicon | NGC 2301 (unc.edu)