Introduction:
NGC 3766 also known as Caldwell 97 is an young age open star cluster found in the Southern constellation Centauras, this cluster also received the nickname “The Pearl Cluster” due to it being a very dense open cluster and shimmers like a pearl.

This cluster was discovered by French astronomer Nicholas Louis de Lacaille on March 5, 1752 from South Africa. This cluster is said to be a good target to find with just binoculars but can also be seen with the naked eye.

In order to study and understand NGC 3766 the relationships between the colours, brightnesses, and the age and chemical composition of the cluster, I have collected around 15 images each in the B, V, R, I filters, with these respective exposure times 40s, 35s, 20s, and 15s through Skynet. I combined these images and changed certain parameters to receive these final images. I also was able to find properties of this cluster such as … (display data about cluster) by using Cluster Pro Plus (insert link) by adjusting the data to fit I was able to find these results.

 

ISM-reddened (NGC 3766)

 

De-reddened (NGC 3766)

 

I learned that the cluster I was analysing was mainly made up of young stars due to it being heavily blue on the graphs shown. We can also a handful of red giants on the far right of the graph.

This cluster was studied by Kharchenko et al (2013), who found these parameters, below is the comparison to the results I have found.

	My Results	MWSC
RA	-6.772 +/- 0.262	11 36 18
DEC	1.067 +/- 0.393	-61 36.9
Distance	2.4 kpc	1.685 kpc
Log (Age)	7.19	7.950
Calculated Age	1.5488166 × 10^7	N/A
Metalicity	-0.71	N/A

Conclusion:
This cluster project was important to me due to my passion of space and understanding the universe, this allowed to learn new skills on how to understand and analyze certain objects / clusters in space, by learning to image and compose the images. By doing this I was able to properly read the data from these images, which is absolutely amazing. Overall this was fun and eye opening!