M29 Open Star Cluster
| Description |
Messier 29, or M29, also known as NGC 6913 or the Cooling Tower Cluster, is a quite small, bright open cluster of stars just south of the central bright star Gamma Cygni in the northern zone of the sky, Cygnus. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1764 and can be seen from Earth by using binoculars. M29 is well within the several degrees of the arms and bulge of the Milky Way. It is at least many hundreds of light-years short of the yardstick distance to the Galactic Center, and is between 4,000 and 7,200 light-years away. A 1998 popular work gives a value within this range. Data from Gaia EDR3 gives a parallactic distance of about 5,240 light-years. The uncertainty is due to the poorly known absorption of the cluster’s light. Its extinction is greatly influenced by faint surrounding nebulosity and other foreground interstellar matter at this cross-section of the spiral arms (see the Orion–Cygnus Arm, which is our local arm). |
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| Data/Processing Attribution |
This is my data and processing. |
| Distances/Size |
Distance to the object- 5,240 light years; angular size in the sky is about 7’ (minutes) |
| Equipment |
Mount-PlaneWave L-350; Scope-PlaneWave CDK14″, 356 mm aperture, 2563 mm focal length; Camera-Moravian C3-61000, 0.30 arcsec/pixel. |
| Observatory |
The image was captured at the Prairie Skies Astro remote observatory. |
| Exposure |
The total exposure using H and RGB filters is 4 hours, 40 minutes, and 30 seconds, with each H sub-exposure lasting 300 seconds and RGB lasting 90 seconds. H Filters H- 24X300= 2 hours 0 minutes
RGB Filters R- 36X90= 0 hours 54 minutes G-36X90= 0 hours 54 minutes B-35X90= 0 hours 52 minutes 30 seconds Total- 4 hours 40 minutes 30 seconds Processing is done in PixInsight, Photoshop, and Lightroom Classic |