NGC 6819, the Foxhead Cluster (BrettWaller)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg) · Contains: Foxhead Cluster · NGC 6819

NGC 6819, the Foxhead Cluster, BrettWaller

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NGC 6819, the Foxhead Cluster

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NGC 6819, the Foxhead Cluster

NGC 6819 is a highly concentrated and rich open cluster of faint stars that contrasts with the surrounding field of Milky Way stars. Deep images reveal a hundred stars of magntitude 11.5 to 15 within a 5' area. Discovered by Caroline Herschel on 12 May 1784, she described it as "halfway between delta Cyg & eta & theta Lyrae making an isosceles triangle downwards when in that situation". With an integrated visual magnitude of 7.3, it contains approximately 150 stars within a diameter 9.5', the brightest member being magnitude 11.49. It often appears in lists of challenging objects for visual observers.

NGC 6819 is Trumpler Type I 1 r open cluster, also catalogued as Melotte 233, Collinder 403, and Lund 900. It visually resembles a globular cluster, and Lund mistakenly listed it as such. It lies at a distance of 7,200 light years, and its age is estimated as 2.5 billion years, thus the reddish color of it's older red-giant members. The surrounding, bright bluish stars are unrelated and in the foreground of the Milky Way.

If you are wondering, as I was, about why this cluster has the moniker "Fox Head', many visual observers see a distinct "V" in the brightest stars of the cluster, and since a fox has a triangular head, the name caught on.

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Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
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Astrometry.net job	3577249
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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NGC 6819, the Foxhead Cluster

NGC 6819, the Foxhead Cluster

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NGC 6819, the Foxhead Cluster

NGC 6819, the Foxhead Cluster

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