Canon 350D Hap Griffin Baader Mod 20x180sec at iso 1600 30 Darks/Flats/Bias APM/TMB 130/780 Refractor with AP flattener
Also known as NGC 2437, M46 is at a distance of about 5,400 light-years away from Earth with an estimated age of about 300 million years. The cluster contains about 500 stars of which 150 are brighter than magnitude 13. Its spatial diameter is some 30 light years. It is receding from us at 41 Km/s.
The planetary nebulaNGC 2438 appears to lie within the cluster at its northern edge (the faint smudge at the top center of the image), but it is most likely a foreground object because it recedes at 77 Km/s, it is probably much younger than the cluster, and it would have been ejected from a star much older than the cluster.
Unfortunately, this image is slightly out of focus. I was using DSLRFocus for the first time.
