Astr110 Photography Projects, Fall 2005

Stars Near Kemble's Cascade , Jeff Lawson

Located in the constellation Camelopardalis, Kemble’s Cascade consists of a relatively straight line of about 20 stars ranging from a magnitude of 5 to 10. Kemble’s Cascade is classified as an asterism of stars and stretches the length of five moon diameters. Named after the man who first noticed it in 1980, Father Francis Lucian J. Kemble, Kemble’s Cascade is known as one of the “finest binocular objects in the winter sky.” The term “cascade” originated from Lucian Kemble writing to his friend calling his discovery “a beautiful cascade of faint stars.” Many have assumed Kemble’s Cascade to be an open cluster but it is more accurately a “chance alignment of stars” appearing to be a star cluster. Interestingly, Kemble’s Cascade appears as a straight line only from our position in the Milky Way. Due to the varying distances of the stars in the asterism, its linear size is not able to be determined.

The picture above is unfortunately not Kemble’s Cascade but a photo of stars nearby. Although the beauty and uniqueness of Kemble’s Cascade is not seen in this photo, the variation of color among stars is visible. In this photo you can see the low temperature red stars which have a temperature of around 3000K and also the hotter, more luminous blue stars that can get up to over 30,000K, and both types are present in this photo.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemble's_Cascade

http://www.backyard-astro.com/deepsky/bino/01_b.html