Again, Cygnus is not really my first thought when it comes to open clusters (at least, not ones that seem to have no nebulosity surrounding them). But this cluster could rival anything in Auriga. And the pairing the the (obviously much-more-distant) NGC6946 (see other post from today) just really makes it a wonderful target.

This one was a “freebie”; I was aiming for the galaxy. But the planetarium software said there was a big cluster here, so I framed it in. Very nice.

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!

First time shooting M35. I don’t particularly dig open clusters (with the exception of The Pleiades), but I needed something to shoot for a little bit before Orion rose high enough for me to make an

attempt at The Rosette Nebula, so I decided to shoot this guy.

First light with Pumpkin, the new 66mm refractor.
It’s been awhile since I hand-focused, and I really need my diffraction spike focusing rig.
This little scope has plenty of FOV to spare, though. Perfect on these large targets.

M13, Globular Cluster in Hercules
First light for the new 8” SCT. Could probably get some more detail, but not bad for a first shot.
This shot was unguided, mostly because I haven’t been able to get the ST-4 to guide the new scope very well. Also, the mount is acting up a bit. I think the scope isn’t very well balanced.

After great success with M13, I decided to turn my attention to other Globular Clusters, or at least ones that get lots of press. So, I tried out M3 again. Just a quick set of 4 images, but it’s big and bright enough to show up pretty well for all that.

M45, The Pleiades, Open Cluster/Reflection Nebula in Taurus
Finally got back around to some of the winter objects.
Picked up some decent nebulosity.

M13, Globular Cluster in Hercules

This is a fairly large stack (70 2-minute images), all taken unguided from my new G-11 mount.
The mount is really a big improvement over the CG-5GT. Unguided images are a dream.

M13, Globular Cluster in Hercules
(the autoguider at Ad Astra Observatory is operational!)

M13, Globular Cluster in Hercules
(the first shot from Ad Astra Observatory)