NGC 654, NGC 659 and NGC 663 - wonderfuluniverse.de

NGC 654, NGC 659 and NGC 663 from my backyard

In 2010, I captured a wide-field image containing three beautiful open clusters—NGC 654, NGC 659, and NGC 663—all within a single field of view using my DSLR equipment. Framing multiple clusters together created a particularly rich and rewarding composition.

All three clusters are located in the constellation Cassiopeia, a region well known for its abundance of young stellar groupings along the Milky Way. They lie at distances of roughly 6,000–8,000 light-years and are relatively young, with ages of only a few tens of millions of years. Their stellar populations are dominated by hot, blue stars, giving them a distinctly bluish appearance in color images.

Although they share a similar region of the sky, each cluster has its own character: NGC 663 is the richest and most prominent of the trio, NGC 654 appears more compact, and NGC 659 is somewhat looser in structure. Imaging them together beautifully illustrates the clustered nature of star formation within our galaxy, where multiple stellar associations can form within the same giant molecular cloud complex.

Data calibration and registration was done with DeepSkyStacker and the final processing was done with PixInsight. The result was as follows: