Messier 29 - The Cooling Tower Cluster

Messier 29, also known as the Cooling Tower Cluster, is located in my favorite constellation, Cygnus. To be honest, I have no idea why it is called the Cooling Tower Cluster, but there is probably a logical reason behind the name. Before 2018, its distance was estimated to be around 5,200 light-years from our planet, but more recent publications based on Gaia DR2 and EDR3 data place it at a distance of roughly 4,000–4,500 light-years.

The Cooling Tower Cluster consists of around 50 stars in total and has an apparent magnitude of 6.6. It is fairly dim compared to some other Messier open clusters, mainly due to dark interstellar dust in front of it. While photographing this object, I noticed faint red hues in my individual subframes. As is well known, the Cygnus region contains a large amount of hydrogen-alpha emission nebulosity, and some of it is also present here.

Because I am able to capture this object from my balcony, it would not be a bad idea to give it another try. This time I would like to use my Optolong UV/IR cut filter for RGB stars and my dual-band Optolong L-eXtreme filter for Hα and Oiii.