The southern part of the Cygnus constellation is not as well known and not as often imaged as its northern area. But this is a place, where famous double star Albireo is shining. And also here there are a plethora of fancy-shaped dark nebulae. The dense field of Milky Way stars forms here a perfect background for clouds of dust that would not be visible otherwise. Some of these clouds contain molecular hydrogen that can be excited to shine in the deep red color once there will be a hot star nearby. Also, several open clusters are visible here. The problem with that part of the sky is, that it does not contain any famous deep-sky target. There is a lot of everything here, but nothing spectacular. Nothing good enough to have its own common name. But dark nebulae lovers try to change it 🙂
So now if you take a look into the lower right part of the image and go up and left, you may try to name at least a few of the dark nebulae in Vulpecula. Many people can see there: diplodocus, scythe or pipe, stegosaurus, and mustache. These shapes are not obvious, but there are not made to be. Such areas in the sky are a perfect target for medium and large-size binoculars, or other instruments with a decent field of view – at least a few degrees wide.
This image was captured at the star party in Zatom in September 2021. Conditions were quite decent, the sky was dark and not as much humidity as it can be in that location, but unfortunately, that is only two hours of total exposure time because half of the subframes were captured without the camera cooling on and were not usable 🙁
Annotated image is presented below.
Full resolution image https://astrojolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021-10-10-Vul.jpg
Clear skies!
Image technical data: Date: September, 2021 Location: Zatom, Poland Telescope: Samyang 135 f/2.8 Corrector: none Camera: QHY247C, gain 2000 Mount: SW Adventurer Guiding: 30mm + ASI290M Exposure: 65x2 minutes Conditions: Bortle 3, transparency good