A nice couple of clusters suitable for wide fields telescopes. For visual practice and in rural skies. Both clusters are good targets for any kind of instruments even for naked eyes. NGC 2451 is far closer compared to his compact neighbor. It has around 40 stars well dispersed. It brightest star is c puppis, a yellowish giant of magnitude 3,6. The cluster was discovered by Giovanni Batista Hodierna in 1654.
NGC 2477 is a splendid rich cluster grouping over 300 menmbers. Its age is estimated in 700 million years.
It is almost as extensive as the full Moon. The sky background is covered by faint Hydrogen clouds giving the whole area a nice contrast.
The image was taken with an 66 mm f6 refractor and a QSI 583 WS CCD camera, from rural skies at 100 north
from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Total exposure time was 100 minutes for LHaRGB filters (all channels bin 2x2)