NGC 6823 & 6820 - An Open Cluster w/Nebula - Quite Possibly The Worst Image I Have Ever Taken!
Date: August 11, 2020
Cosgrove’s Cosmos Catalog ➤#0046
NGC 6823 & 6820: There is nothing I like about this image! (click to enlarge)
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About the Target
Located in the constellation Vulpecula, NGC 6823 is a small open cluster of stars and associated reflection nebula, NGC 6820. The cluster is located about 6000 light-years away and measures about 50 light-years across.
Annotated Image
Annotated image of the NGC 6823 & 6820 was created with Pixinsight’s Imagesolver and AnotateImage scripts.
Location in the Sky
IAU/Sky & Telescope Constellation Chart of Vulpecula with the location of the cluster and nebula indicated by a yellow arrow.
About the Project
The weather has not been great for astrophotography - lots of clouds or evenings with very thin, high cirrus clouds. You can still see the stars with the latter, but the thin clouds can mess up a captured images.
Last night I was out with one of my rigs doing some testing - I had not planned on shooting anything given the clouds. But I started capturing a series of exposures on this area of the sky and just let the automation take over.
This object is not often photographed, and I was wondering what details I could pull out. The first subs came back, only showing the stars and very little nebulosity. But I ended up grabbing 50 2-minute subs, and once processed, I found more going on than I first thought. The bright stars were a little bloated - this is caused by the thin cirrus clouds that were moving through the area. I did some processing to minimize this, but the bright stars still have a bit of a halo.
Commentary from 7-27-21 when adding this project to the website
What can I say? I really don’t like this image. It was not chosen carefully. The capture was not planned out at all. The weather was not right. There is no nice composition to the frame. No wonderful colors or interesting details. Mostly muddy and blah! I said I would show the bad with the good - this is one would be in a bad category. The only real value to images like these is as inspiration to do better - or at least never do any as bad as this again…..
Capture Details
Lights
50 x 120 seconds, bin 1x1 @ -15C
The total integration time is 1.6 hours
Cal Frames
Never recroded1
Capture Hardware
Scope: William Optics 132mm FLT F/7 APO
Guide Scope: Apterna 60mm
Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro
Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini
Camera Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon
Focus Motor: Pegasus Astro Focus Cube 2
Mount: Ioptron CEM60Polar Alignment: Ioptron Ipolar integrated alignment cameras
Software
Capture Software: Control: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller
Image Processing: Deepsky Stacker, Pixinsight, Photoshop, Coffee, extensive processing indecision and second guessing, and much swearing…..
During the Summer of 2020, whilst stuck at home because of Covid I became very in improving the automation of the platform and achieving a more precise framing of the shots I made…