M29 The Cooling Tower Open Cluster in Cygnus

At the end of my stargazing session last night there was still a bit of dark sky remaining so I spent about three quarters of an hour on Messier 29.

 

M29, also known as NGC 6913, is sometimes called the Cooling Tower Cluster. It is a quite small, bright open cluster of stars just south of the central bright star Gamma Cygni in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan.

 

I didn't have to spend hours capturing faint wisps of galactic spiral arms or fetching the folds and details of a nebula because the stars show up quickly against the dark sky.

 

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Telescope: Celestron C11-A XLT Schmidt Cassegrain OTA

Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

 

Controller: ZWO ASIAIR Plus 256G

Main Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro at -10C

Filter: ZWO IR Cut filter

Focuser: ZWO EAF

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI174MM Mini guidecam

Guide via: ZWO OAG

 

Stacked from:

Lights 23 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Darks 30 at 120 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Flats 30 at 1.08 seconds, gain 101, temp -10C

Dark Flats 30 at 1.08 seconds gain 101 temp -10C

 

Bortle 4 sky.

Integrated the saved frames in Astro Pixel Processor.

Processed in PixInsight

Added captions in Photoshop CS4

 

Done