Touring the Summer Triangle with Astrotracer and a Super Takumar 55mm f/1.8 IV: Lyra, Globular Cluster, M56 and The Ring Nebula, M57
The western outskirts of the Milky Way touches Lyra at star Gamma Lyrae, but it is faint and at 1:30 (2:30 DST) in the morning, the sky is already brightening again here in July so, not much Milky Way glory to show here:
Stack in DSS of 5 25 second exposures at ISO 1600. Click to see larger version
But there a are few gems worthwhile hunting down here, notably the famous Ring Nebula, M57 but also the less heard of globular cluster, M56:
Crop of the above image. Click to see larger, (still much downsized) version
M56 and M57 are smallish objects of only 5 and 1 arcminutes diameter respectively and a 55mm lens will only shown their presence without much detail:
Globular cluster M56 in Lyra. Non-resized 100% crop of the original stacked image.
Planetary nebula M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra. Non-resized 100% crop of the original stacked image.
Still, it is fun to hunt down these small gems and thus, to produce one's own star charts by means of just a normal lens, camera and tripod - PLUS Astrotracer, without which the faint light of these objects would have been smeared out and blended into the background without any hope of recovery.
Last stop of this tour will be outside the Summer Triangle:Hercules with its globular clusters.........