It was a clear night at Schrick after weeks of bad weather in which I was finally able to make some additions to my open star cluster gallery.
The wind faded quickly, the seeing was calm and no dew was to be expected to condense on my optics. These were the first pictures to be taken with my new guiding equipment, which had the advantage to correct not just for the position of a single star but of multiple star patterns. That made the way for the sharp picture you are seeing if you click on the picture to watch the larger version.

M 37 was discovered even before it made it into the famous catalogue from the french astronomer Charles Messier. It was documented by Giovanni Battista Hodierna, who - similarily like Messier - was engaged in comet discovery and tried to make sure that comet-like objects were listed properly in order not to be mistaken with the interplanetary wanderers. With an apparent magnitude of 5.6m the cluster might theoretically be observed even with the naked eye, but it needed an extremely dark sky in very remote high mountain regions - not the conditions I experienced - just 40 km distance from the city centre of Vienna.