Reflections from Heaven

IC1311

Open Cluster in Cygnus

RA:20h 12m 53s Dec: +41 12' 20" Distance - ~19,654 ly Size 5'x5'

Location & Date	Backyard, Abbott Observatory- Long Island, NY, July 2022
Telescope	TMB130SS 910mm F/7 APO, Moonlite focuser, Losmandy G11 Gemini Image scale 1.54 arcsec/pixel
Camera	SBIG ST-10XME Baader Ha R G B filters CCD temp -10°C
Exposures	Ha- 24x5m Red- 18x3m Green- 18x3m Blue- 18x3m Bin 1x1
Planning & Acquisition	Sequence Generator Pro
Processing	CCDStack - Calibration, Debloom, Normalize, Alignment, Stacking, Deconvolution Adobe PS - Ha+RGB combine, Color adjustments, Noise reduction, JPEG conversion RC-Astro Star XTerminator

IC1311 is an open star cluster located within a very large interstellar emission complex in the constellation Cygnus near the Gamma Cygni Nebula complex named IC1318.

IC1311 was discovered in 1893 by British astronomer Thomas Espin and is estimated to be 1.6 billion years old and containes over 800 stars.

The dark nebula to the right of IC1311 is LDN885 and seen above LDN885 is the very small and faint planetary nebula Patchick 6.

NGC 6991 position shown relative to our location (Sun) in the Milky Way Galaxy

Galatic Longitude: 77.7

Galatic Latitude:4.3

Distance from Galatic Plane:1522 ly above the galatic plane

Above image and info provided by Our Galaxy 3D Atlas application and used with permission by Otherwise

2 hour exposure taken with a 5nm Hydrogen-alpha (Ha) filter showing the nebula structure the open star cluster is located in.

This was used as the luminance channel.

The same 2 hour exposure with the star removed to show the complex structure of hydrogen and dust.

The dark nebula at the 3 o'clock position is LDN 885 and above that you can see the small round planetary nebula Patchick 6.