Sh2-101 Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1 (Joe Niemeyer)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg)

Sh2-101 Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1, Joe Niemeyer

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Sh2-101 Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1

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Sh2-101 Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1

This is my image of the Tulip Nebula, cataloged as Sh2-101. This beautiful nebula blossoms 80 light years across and is located about 8,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The nebula is fairly dim at mag. 9, so it was quite a challenge to tease it out from the bright star field. The brighter of two bright stars in the upper right corner of this image is a companion star to Cygnus X-1, the first confirmed black hole. Cygnus X-1 is about 15 times the mass of the Sun and located 7,200 light years away. It is classified as a stellar-mass black hole that has resulted from the collapse of a massive star. It is continually sucking away material from its companion. I was challenged by a fellow astronomy buff to photograph a black hole, which is of course impossible since it emits no light. But we know the black hole is there due to x-ray studies. So I think I win!

I made this image from thirty 300-second exposures through my Baader dual-bandpass filter (Hα and OIII) and shot at 2345mm prime focal length, calibrated with 20 each dark, flat, and dark flat frames. I stacked the frames with Astro Pixel Processor, breaking out the Ha, OIII, and luminance signals into separate channels. The stack was post-processed with StarNet++, Photoshop, and DeNoise AI.

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Astrometry.net job	5009058
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Sh2-101 Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1

Sh2-101 Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1

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Sh2-101 Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1

Sh2-101 Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1

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