• Constellation: Cygnus
  • Right Ascension: 20h 3.7m
  • Declination: +44° 00'
  • Distance: 3,900 ly

NGC 6866 is an open cluster located in Cygnus. Caroline Herschel is credited with it's discovery. The blue stars really stand out, and you can just start to see the of a reddish glow of interstellar gas and dust that permeates this area of the sky.

It shows up in the field of view of my photo-metric observations of Kic 8462852, so while waiting for my next target I used the ES127 refractor to take some R/G/B images of it. At least one of the stars is a short term variable star.

  • Telescope: Explore Scientific 127 Refractor
  • Camera: Atik 314l+