Photo of the Week for August 2, 2019
Regular visitors to this site may be noticing a pattern with the recent Photo of the Week postings. Yes, quite a few have featured deep-sky objects in the constellation Cygnus. Little wonder really—the Northern Cross (as it’s also known) is home to wonderfully rich swath of Milky Way that astrophotographers and visual observers find irresistible.
The shot presented here encompasses a 5-degree wide field near 2.2-magnitude Gamma Cygni. Telescopes equipped with specialized filters and used under a dark sky can display some of the brighter nebulous regions shown in the photo above, including the aptly named Crescent Nebula (NGC6888) at lower right. Also present (near the bottom of the frame) is the easiest catch of all, sparse open cluster, M29.
Mirable, Quebec, astrophotographer Yanick Bouchard created this 9-tile mosaic of “the Heart of Cygnus” using a Celestron EdgeHD 925, 9¼-inch telescope with HyperStar (for a focal ratio of f/2.3) and a ZWO ASI1600MC cooled colour CMOS camera.
