2019-08-06: Sharpless 101 or LBN168 the Tulip Nebula, with Cygnus X-1

This is 7 hour exposure of the Tulip Nebula using a short 384 mm focal length, F/4.8 wide field telescope at my favorite Buford Mountain Conservation Area location. Young and very hot new stars cause the hydrogen to glow red. The many dark regions of dense dust are collapsing to form yet more stars. I like this particular patch of sky at the southern section of Cygnus (better known as the Northern Cross) because it looks straight down our arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The bright start at center-right is Epsilon Cygni. On average, our sun is moving in this direction. There are more stars in this image that are visible by eye alone in the entire night sky. If you can get away from city lights with a pair of binoculars, Cygnus is a beautiful patch of sky to view.

Sharpless 101 or LBN168, with Cygnus X-1 taken over four nights between June 29 and July 21, 2019. This image was taken with a Stellarvue SV80 apochromat, with focal reducer, at 384 mm focal length and F/4.8. The camera was a QSI 683wsg-8 with Astrodon generation II filters. The mount was a Losmandy G11G2 on a permanent pier. The system was controlled with Sequence Generator Pro 2 and PHD2 control software. Processing was in PixInsight. The total exposure was 7 hours 20 minutes: Lum - 11 x 10 min (binned 1x1); Ha – 5 x 30 min (1x1), R – 6 x 10 min (2x2); G – 6 x 10 min (2x2); B – 6 x 10 min (2x2).

This is a crop of the central region. The green lines indicate the location of the Cygnus X-1 object.