Collinder 399 (Vul)

Collinder 399 (Vul)

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Date/Site: July 20th, 2010, AAR-observatory in Presberg
Exposure/
Filter:
17 x 3 minutes
Camera: Canon EOS 300Da
Optics/
Instrument:
Canon EF 200mm f/2,8-lens, mounted on a Vixen Super Polaris, no guiding
focusing by hand with the aid of DSLR Focus
Darks, alignment and stacking: DeepSkyStacker,
levels and curves: Photoshop CS3.

The second session with the 200 mm f/2,8-lens captured the surroundings of the wide open cluster Collinder 399, also known as Brocchi's cluster, as the „coathanger“ or as the „Seilbahn“.
Some deep-sky-object previously unknown to me (with the exception of NGC 6802) appeared on the picture: the thick dark nebulae all over the area and the fine blue haze in front of Cr 399, in the middle of the northern dark nebula the reflection nebula vdB 126, below it the open cluster NGC 6793, seemingly disappearing in the stars of the milky way. South of Cr 399 a little brother of the Cocoon-nebula appears, Sh2-82. The globular cluster Palomar 10, which lay on the extreme western edge of the last few frames, unfortunately was cut off during alignment and stacking of the frames.
Camera with lens was mounted on an old Super Polaris-mount, pointed to the northamerica-nebula, and a sequence of relatively short exposures was started.
There is no need to stop down the lens with the 300D.
After a bit of fiddling with the focus (which in the end did not turn out to be perfect) the investment in work was low and the result is not that bad.

© Friedhelm Hübner, last revision:  03.12.2023