ngc 5823 also known as Caldwell 88 is a relatively young open star cluster located in the southern region of the Circinus constellation.

Discovered in 1826 by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop it stands at a distance of 1192 parsecs from earth. (or about 3888 light years)¹

This Star cluster is easily visible from the southern hemisphere with small telescopes or medium powered binoculars as it has a magnitude of 7.9 and is located below the celestial equator²              ngc 5823 also spans a distance of roughly 12 light years.

In order to study ngc 5823 and investigate the relationships between the colours, brightness’s, and the age and chemical composition of the cluster as a whole, I collected 15 images using the Prompt 6 telescope located in the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile with the R, B and V filters using exposure times of 62.99 seconds for the B filter, 23.62 seconds for the V filter and 15.75 seconds for the R filter. Each observation within each filter was executed once with at least an hour between them until there were 5 observations of each filter type. I used Afterglow to create three stacked set of images within their respective filters and then created a tri-colour image by setting each filter stack to its respective colour band. Using the Photometric data obtained through afterglow i was able to use Cluster Astromancers isochrone matching to find the following data.

RA	DEC	Distance	log(age)	Metallicity	E(B-V)
226.39°	-55.61°	1.85 (kpc)	8.5 log(yrs)	0.25 (solar)	0.55 (mag)

Using this data i was able to de redden the photo which can be compared below.

Before                                                                   After

NGC 5823 was also listed in the MWSC Catalogue with the following data values

RA	DEC	Distance	log(age)	Metallicity	E(B-V)
226.38	-55.595	1189 Parsecs	8.96 log(yrs)	not determined	0.104 (mag)

which gives the following isochrone matching graph (with my estimation for metallicity).

Although this graph does look quite similar to my previous estimations it has a bit of a different curve which better aligns with the stars lower on the graph.

Overall this project was fairly challenging as it made me think of stars in a different manner then i am used to as there was no formula to follow step by step in terms of picking the best values for each step but it was still very enjoyable and i feel like i learned alot about this star cluster and i am quite satisfied with the colorized images i obtained through this work.