Astrobin debut – introducing NGC 6916 in Cygnus – another “hidden galaxy”
About the Object
A series of 4 consecutive clear (but very short) summer nights gave me the opportunity to get 2 astrobin debuts (I think). The second one is NGC 6916. It is a barred spiral of type SBbc, at a distance of about 149 Mly and a diameter of some 75000 ly. We are moving into the Cygnus region, i.e. diving into the Milky Way. This can be noticed by the much higher density of stars (if you compare it with a typical galaxy season object with a similar FoV), and NGC 6916 stands out as it is fairly faint in the blue, indicative of increasing extinction owing to the Galaxy and reminiscent of IC 342, the famous "hidden galaxy". So I checked the location in the Finkenbeiner & Schlafy dust map, and indeed it has a extinction E(B-V) of about 0.35 mag (IC 342 has E(B-V) of 0.48). So NGC6916 is the "little hidden galaxy".
Observation Notes
Data were taken on July 5,6,7, and 8.
Technical Details
View the full-resolution image together with complete acquisition and processing details on AstroBin.
View on AstroBin ↗