Astr110 Photography Projects, Fall 2005

Stars near Kemble's Cascade, Daniel Meyers, Laura Moes

This photograph depicts a section of space 33 arcminutes 40 arcseconds distant from Kemble's Cascade and located in the region of Camelopardalis, however it is equally close to the constellations Cassiopeia and Cepheus. It is approximately 1.5 degress from NGC 1501, a planetary nebula. The brightest star in the photograph is SAO 12998 with a magnitude of 7.34. Ironically, it is also the most distant: 1462.59 light years away. At this distance, the total field has a linear size of about 9 light years. The second brightest star is GSC 4068:1510 with a magnitude 10.13.

Most of the stars are main-sequence stars. They have a beautiful array of yellows and whites, common to that hydrogen burning stage. We can tell by this color that they are not high mass nor high luminosity, because then they would be blue or would be brighter. Due to the relative obscurity of these stars, we can provide no more information pertaining to them. However, it's popular neighbor, Kemble's Cascade, has a plethora of information.

Kemble's Cascade is named after Lucian J. Kemble, a Franciscan friar and WWII veteran, who observed it and 5550 other objects with only a Celestron 11 telescope. Kemble's Cascade is an asterism, a pattern created by unrelated stars, and would only appear as a line from our position in space. It contains stars from the 5th to 10th magnitude and many various colors from bright blue to orange.

References:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_search
http://wikipedia.org
TheSky software