I was running out of ideas of things to shoot; I’m getting pretty worn out from several nights in a row of being up late shooting, and I’m starting to make bad decisions about target selection.
Anyway, after thrashing around a little (I considered shooting Rho Ophiucus and also some stuff that was skimming the rooftops in Cepheus), I settled on a nice, easy to find target.
NGC6888, The Crescent Nebula, is an old friend. Click the link for some previous photos.
Obviously, Pumpkin’s wide FOV was going to produce a much different image of the area. In fact, the field was wide enough to pick up bright Sadr, the “center of the cross” in Cygnus. That’s the obviously-brightest star in the field, at upper left.
My previous attempts at NGC 6888 hinted at some extra, dim nebulosity in the area, but I was pretty pleased with how much I picked up here.
One thing I’ve noticed (it’s particularly noticeable in this image) is that, although I have a field flattener in place, the field is still noticeably curved, which is why the stars at the edge of the frame are so much larger than the ones at the center. I can play around some with the distance between the flattener and the CCD, but I think this might be something that I just have to live with. Pumpkin is a really nice scope, and doing an excellent job for me as an astrograph, but this is the difference, I suppose, between a $300 scope and a $3000 scope.
All told, a very nice image.
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