First kind of clear night without a Moon since I really can’t remember when. Even though the sky was free of clouds, the humidity was very high and it was pretty hazy throughout the night. Still I was able to capture a bit of light from NGC 6819, the Foxhead Cluster, which is the SkywatcherUSA July 2026 Target of the Month (TOTM).
| Primary (Imaging) | Secondary (Guiding) |
|---|---|
| Scope: SVBONY SV503 102ED Reducer/Flattener: 0.8 Focal Reducer/Flattener (~571mm – F/5.6) Filter: None Camera: ZWO ASI294 MC Pro, Cooled to 0 C Focuser: ZWO EAF Mount: Sky Watcher EQ6-R Pro |
Scope: SVBONY SV165 30mm F/4 Guide Scope Camera: Orion Star Shooter Autoguider (OSSAG) |
| Telescope Control, Image Acquisition, and Image Processing Software | |
|
Equipment Control and Imaging Software: NINA/PHD2/ASCOM on a Mini-PC Processing Software: PixInsight |
|
It took a bit to get polar aligned. I had to run the alignment 4 or 5 times to get it dialed in to where I was happy with it. I could not cool the camera below 0 C as the sensor kept icing up, it was just so humid.
I set up a NINA sequence to shoot 3 hours of NGC 6819 and kicked off the sequence around 10:30 PM Eastern (I didn’t think it would ever get dark). The sky was fairly bright due to how hazy it was, but I was still able to get a solid 3 hours of 180 second exposures (60 x 180). Meridian Flip executed successfully just before 1:30 AM. In the morning I shot a set of darks (10 x 180s).
NGC 6819, the Foxhead cluster, is an open cluster of stars located in the constellation of Cygnus. The cluster contains about 2 dozen stars of magnitude 10 to 12 along with many others at lower magnitudes. The Foxhead cluster is about 7200 lightyears from Earth.
I captured 60 exposures of NGC 6819, 54 were suitable for stacking. After stacking I did some tinkering in PixInsight and below is the result.
54 x 180 second exposures, stacked and calibrated using WBPP in PixInsight, then background extraction and denoise, and a bit of stretching. Takes a little imagination, but I can see the Foxhead in the open cluster of stars.
Took a bit to get things going, and the sky could have been a bit better, but it was good to get the chance to capture some far away light. For the near future it looks like we are back to cloudy Summer skies. Going to put my SkywatcherUSA TOTM submission together.
Headed down to Ocracoke Island in a couple weeks, hoping to get the SeeStar S50 out under those dark skies.
Fingers-crossed for clearer skies soon…
