I am absolutely fascinated by some regions of Cygnus, where the Ha nebulae creates an abstract canvas in the night sky, full of twists and bends, lights and shadows and therefore decided to take my go in this beautiful region. Aiming initially to simply shoot the Ha nebulae and RGB stars, the scope of this project took a different turn when Brendan Kinch, one of my preferred astrophotographers, publishes a photo of the same area where a supernova remnant is visible (
https://www.kinchastro.com/snr-g0822053.html). Too good for not going down the rabbit hole…
This SNR is the blue oval structure on the bottom half, is mostly visible in Oiii wavelength and for sure one the dimmest signal I ever tried to capture; even with 15 hours in bin 2, the signal is really difficult to be separated from the background. For sure more integration time is needed and/or a much better sky and as such, Oiii data doesn’t have much detail.About the object, this SNR is estimated to be at about 5,000 light years from us, closer than the hydrogen alpha clouds and it is not interacting with them. It is a fairly old one, with an estimated age between 14,000 to 21,000 years.
Interestingly, on the right edge of the photo there is a bright region called Simeis 57, aka the Propeller Nebula. This is a fairly mysterious object, whose nature and origin is not fully known and the main unknown is that none of the stars nearby seem to be energetic enough to ionize its gas.So, indeed a rabbit hole… What was about to be a simple photo became a real cosmic matroschka where many hours were spent shooting and processing.
Higher resolution here:
https://flic.kr/p/2nEB8dHShot at Barcarena, Portugal (Bortle 8) on the 26th, 28th and 29th of July and 1st and 2nd of August 2022.
Technical details:
Ha: 101 x 300 s (8h25)
Oiii: 222 x 240 s (14h48)
RGB: 3x40x30 s (1h00)
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