NGC 5286 is a globular cluster that is 35000 light years away, located in the Southern constellation Centaurus. Also known as Caldwell 84, this cluster was discovered by James Dunlop in 1826, while he was in Australia. According to NASA, it is among the oldest globular clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. It is speculated to be a member of the ‘Gaia Sausage’ – a dwarf galaxy that collided with the Milky Way around 9 million years ago.

Using Skynet, I captured 15 images of NGC 5286. They were taken using PROMPT-MO-1, doing 5 sets of 3 images – one of B, V, and R filters, with an hour in between each set. They were taken with the durations of 78.21, 39.74, and 39.74 for B, V and R, respectively.

 

I took these images into Afterglow, and after using bath photometry was able to input them into Cluster Astromancer. Through Isochrone matching I was able to obtain the following results:

RA: 206.61,   Dec: -51.37,   distance: 2.59 kpc,   log(age): 9.55,   metallicity: -1.45,   E(B – V): 0.61

Using that E(B – V) value I was able to de-redden my image to obtain my final image.

The image obtained shows a lot of red stars very concentrated around the lower middle of the image, which appears to be the centre of the cluster. Above and to the left of the main cluster is a very bright and dominant red star. This cluster is very old and most of the stars appear to be red in the image. These results show that this cluster is very dense in the middle with older stars.

This cluster was listed in the MWSC Catalogue its results are as follows:

RA: 206.612,   Dec: -51.374,   distance: 2.9 kpc,   log(age): 10.1,   metallicity: -1.445,   E(B – V): 0.239

These results are similar to my own although the E(B – V) value is lower and the age is higher. These parameters resulted in slightly different isochrone matching. Mine is on the left while the MWSC parameters are on the right. My line seems to hit more stars at the bottom, but I feel that the MWSC line fits a little better at the top, following covering the dots at the top well.

Looking at these results, I would conclude that my estimation for the distance and age could have been better, as well as the E(B – V) to better reflect the graph of data. But, overall my line was pretty accurate to that of the MWSC data