Vulpecula Cygnus region
This dense starfield and nebular region came through in a surprising fashion for my suburban location. A moonless, transparent night helped. The cluster on the left is NGC 6834 and the red smear on the right is Sharpless 2/91. In the mid-1950's astronomer Stewart Sharpless catalogued the hydrogen nebula regions in the northern sky. The ones shown in this image are very faint and I struggled for several, less favorable nights to get any signal at all.
Tech Stuff: Borg 55FL astrograph/ ZWO ASI 1600MC; IDAS LPS V4 filter; iOptron CubePro unguided 8 second exposures collected in 8 minute stacks, 3 hours total integration time. Processed in PixInsight. Imaged from my yard 10 miles north of New York City. SQM-L reading 19.0 in this Bortle 7/Red Zone. During the Covid lockdown many believe the skies are cleaner than normal but I am finding the weather to be the key determinant of sky quality, and in fact this excellent night (May 21st am) did not reach the 19.1 reading I have experienced under the best "normal" conditions in the past 2 years.
Vulpecula Cygnus region
This dense starfield and nebular region came through in a surprising fashion for my suburban location. A moonless, transparent night helped. The cluster on the left is NGC 6834 and the red smear on the right is Sharpless 2/91. In the mid-1950's astronomer Stewart Sharpless catalogued the hydrogen nebula regions in the northern sky. The ones shown in this image are very faint and I struggled for several, less favorable nights to get any signal at all.
Tech Stuff: Borg 55FL astrograph/ ZWO ASI 1600MC; IDAS LPS V4 filter; iOptron CubePro unguided 8 second exposures collected in 8 minute stacks, 3 hours total integration time. Processed in PixInsight. Imaged from my yard 10 miles north of New York City. SQM-L reading 19.0 in this Bortle 7/Red Zone. During the Covid lockdown many believe the skies are cleaner than normal but I am finding the weather to be the key determinant of sky quality, and in fact this excellent night (May 21st am) did not reach the 19.1 reading I have experienced under the best "normal" conditions in the past 2 years.