Ad Astra Observatory

Cygnus is not generally the area of sky you think of when you think “hey, showpiece galaxy”. But here you go. NGC 6946 has been dodging me for years, so I decided to grab it.

When I pointed over there with the planetarium software, it turns out that there was a huge open cluster right nearby, so I framed them both.

3 bright field stars, too — I mean, seriously. What a gorgeous panorama!

Here’s the whole field. I left the scope running around 1am, and let it go all night. By sunrise, I’d captured 20 frames; I tossed the final one because it was a little sunrise-y. So 190m total, 3h 10m.

And here’s a detail of NGC 6946. It’s a really gorgeous face-on spiral, looks a lot like M101 to my eye. Cool!

I will post the cluster separately, so it’s easier to search for.

20m subframes were slightly trailed, so I stuck with 10m. Didn’t lose a single one due to tracking errors. Thanks, 4026!