The other day I shared an image of NGC 6960 - the Witch's Broom and described how it was a part of the Cygnus Loop formation - the remnant of an expanding shockwave bubble from a star that went supernova about 10,000 years ago. NGC 6992 is another fragment of this bubble. There is no historical record of this event - but it would have been as bright in the sky as the Moon for a few weeks!

The expanding gas from this explosion compressed Hydrogen, Oxygen and Sodium causing the formation of shockwave and causing the colors you see here.

This was taken on the evening of 7-24-20. Despite the fact that there were some early clouds, I set up both imaging rigs and was capturing photons for most of the evening. We did have some clouds roll through - causing the guider to loose the guide star - and creating a chain of events where Sequence Generator Pro - the software used to capture these images - shut things down, waited a bit and then - if the cloud has moved off - started the sequence back up. I even managed to grab some sleep during this process. The automation is starting to pay off.

The framing on this one is a little tight for my focal length - but I think I got most of it in ok. I planned this out yesterday afternoon using a tool in the Sequence Generator Pro software to lay out the precise framing. When I executed the sequence last night, the rig slewed to the object, plate solved to confirm location and current angle and then using my Flacon rotator, spun the camera to frame it just so…. Again - the automation is paying off.

Here are the image details:

65 x 120 seconds

50 x 2 second Bias exposures

25 x 120 second Dark exposures

50 Flats

Scope: William Optics 132mm FLT F/7 APO

Guide Scope: Apterna 60mm

Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI290Mini

Focus Motor: Pegasus Astro Focus Cube 2

Field Rotator: Pegasus Astro Falcon

Mount: Ioptron CEM60

Polar Alignment: Ioptron Ipolar integrated alignment cameras

Capture Software: PHD2 Guider, Sequence Generator Pro controller

Image Processing: Deepsky Stacker, Pixinsight, Photoshop