Cygnus constellation is located in the Milky Way band – actually, it is located in the most prominent Milky Way part visible from the northern hemisphere. That is why this whole area is filled with astronomical targets of different types. We can find here many types of nebulae, and open star clusters and all are floating in the vast hydrogen clouds among huge amount of Milky Way stars.
The area that surrounds the Sadr star is known as Gamma Cygni Nebula. I pointed the telescope there in the summer of 2023 and captured a significant amount of data. That data actually spans across three adjacent frames, so eventually I was able to create a mosaic.
The central part of the mosaic is the Sadr star and surrounding nebulosity. The image was captured using narrowband filters and then processed in a modified HSO palette, so the colors are not natural, but were selected to emphasize the details and features in this region of the sky.
This one panel above contains 15 hours of the total exposure time. The stars in the second image were removed during the postprocessing, so the details are better visible.
Once I finished this image I kind of liked it and decided to gather more data in this features-rich region. So another two panels were captured and eventually, the three-panel mosaic was created. I also decided to embed in the final image the stars in natural RGB colors. It may be considered a bit chaotic, since the nebulosity is false color, and the stars’ color is natural, but the final effect is not that bad in my opinion.
The stars in the second image were removed in postprocessing for the same reason as before.
You may right-click on the picture and select Open Image in the New Tab to see the photo in a better resolution.
The number of objects in the final image is huge and I do not intend to list them and describe them here. It is the time for watching 🙂
Clear skies!
Image technical data: Date: summer 2023 Location: Nieborowice, Poland Telescope: TecnoSky 90/540 Owl triplet Corrector: TS FF/FR 0.8x Camera: QHY268M Mount: EQ6 Guiding: ASI290MM + Evoguide ED50 Exposure: three panels, each is 3x300 minutes HSO and 3x40 minutes RGB Conditions: Bortle 6, transparency and seeing varied
