Fun And Frustration Around Cygnus

[cloudsweeper]

Hallelujah - the neighbour's searchlight was off for once, so out I went, early evening, aiming at Cygnus, just north of west.

One-star alignment on Deneb.

NGC 6910 - open cluster - loose, a few bright stars and several fainter ones in a nice chain.

C15, the Blinking Planetary Nebula - a fuzzy spot - magnified to x145 and it got bigger unlike a star, but saw no details or signs of fluctuation.  (What would be the period of such fluctuations anyway??)

16 Cyg - a triple in a lovely starfield - easily resolved at x48 into components A and B, but saw no third component up to x303 (where it was getting fuzzy and shaky).  Interestingly, component B was found to have an exoplanet in 1996.  (I didn't see it!)

M29, the famous Cooling Tower open cluster - very nice, with characteristic opposing curved lines of stars.

M39, a lovely rich, dense array covering about 30 arcmin - only a hint of the myriad fainter stars there, due to poor transparency, without and without an Nd filter.

And now the frustrations!

Caldwell 27, Crescent Nebula - spot on with GoTo, confirmed by star patterns - but no nebulosity, with and without Nd and UHC filters - again, due to poor transparency and LP.  

Caldwell 19, Cocoon Nebula - comments as above.

So inside after just one hour for a nice meal and a glass of red with Mrs. Sweeper.  Fabulous!

Doug.

[mikey2000]

Cygnus is full of extra stuff I'd never heard of!  Sadly for me, it sinks below the treeline and into the murky haze of Milton Keynes at theis time of year.  I've just added a number of destinations to my 'what to look at in the Autumn' list :-)  Thanks!

[Paul73]

Nice write up Mr Sweeper.

The Crescent can be elusive (likes an OIII filter).

Paul

[Size9Hex]

Nicely done. Cygnus is one of my favourites, although getting very low this time of year. Those fainter targets will get easier and more impressive in the second half of the year when Cygnus is straight up above us in the darkest clearest part of the sky.

[Nathan UK]

Nice little session mate, glad you had fun 

[YKSE]

Nice report Paul.

Cygnus is a bit low nowadays, when it's inhigher in the autumn,  I've never had difficulty to see the cressent (C27) with C8 in my NELM 4.7-4.9 sky, with a UHC iflter of course. C19 is more difficult, but still doable with a UHC with good H-beta transmission, in my backyard.

[cloudsweeper]

50 minutes ago, YKSE said:

Nice report Paul Doug.

Cygnus is a bit low nowadays, when it's inhigher in the autumn,  I've never had difficulty to see the cressent (C27) with C8 in my NELM 4.7-4.9 sky, with a UHC iflter of course. C19 is more difficult, but still doable with a UHC with good H-beta transmission, in my backyard.

Thanks, YKSE and other respondents - good encouragement and advice.  I've bagged some galaxies and nebulae, but don't do so well with faint objects here.  Will definitely aim higher and keep trying!

Doug.

[neural]

Good work Doug. Don't be too hard on yourself re 16 Cyg C, it's 12th magnitude which is pretty faint! I like this one for the very similar but fainter double right next to it (unrelated I assume)  -- did you notice it?

The 'blinking' effect that some planetary nebulae show is not that they flash on and off, but that with averted vision they look much brighter than with direct vision. A lot of them do this. Why it should be planetaries that do this in particular I don't know, perhaps it's because so much of their light is in very narrow bands of wavelength?

[cloudsweeper]

21 minutes ago, neural said:

Good work Doug. Don't be too hard on yourself re 16 Cyg C, it's 12th magnitude which is pretty faint! I like this one for the very similar but fainter double right next to it (unrelated I assume)  -- did you notice it?

The 'blinking' effect that some planetary nebulae show is not that they flash on and off, but that with averted vision they look much brighter than with direct vision. A lot of them do this. Why it should be planetaries that do this in particular I don't know, perhaps it's because so much of their light is in very narrow bands of wavelength?

Thanks!  Yes - apparently these planetaries blink because in DV the central star obscures the nebula, but in AV it can be seen, so the brightness fluctuates as the eye/vision shifts.

Doug.

[johnfosteruk]

Shame about the stuff you didn't bag Doug, but a good haul nonetheless, and always good to finish a session with food and wine.

 

[cotterless45]

Excellent ! It's such a welcome sight to see Cygnus rising in the morning. Reminds me of those warm summer evenings ! The nebulae can be frustrating even under darker skies,

Nick.

[Dave In Vermont]

I could spend my lifetime meandering through Cygnus & Co. It's loaded with interesting denizens!

As stands, it's my Summertime favorite, with Orion and Taurus for the rest of the year.

Dave