Cygnus spreads her wings (Tom Gray)

Cygnus spreads her wings

After my success 'adapting an adapter' to attach my old SLR camera lenses to my DSI III pro, I thought I would try this wide field image of Cygnus again - with better framing and longer integration. Cloud cut short my my image capture, but I am pleased with the number of different objects that can be identified in this image.

After persistent cloud in the UK, we are just so grateful to be able to get out, even under less than perfect skies - high haze and an encroaching moon, as well as the rich emission nebulae in the Cygnus arm of our own galaxy, make hydrogen alpha the preferred spectrum for image capture.

The nebulosity and rifts around gamma Cygni (Sadr) are wonderful, and well worth exploring with my LX5 - aperture and higher focal lengths would really tease out the detail. I'm looking forward to being inspired by others' images of this rich galactic plumage.

Riding piggyback on my LX5 and fork mount, the image was captured at 28mm f5.6 and consists of 36 minutes of integration (all the sky conditions would allow) using a Pentax SLR lens. The mount was roughly polar aligned using my Polaris 9x60 finder, and tracked in the envisage capture software; no autoguiding was required.

Processed in Startools with wipe, stretch, contrast x 2, moderate HDR brightening, mild deconvolution, and the 'life' module used to isolate the nebulae. I also took a few 120s exposures, and may try and incorporate these in a final image. Once again, the power of narrowband filters is evident in making the very best of less than ideal conditions...but what a joy just to get out again.

Original
B
Final
C

B

Description: Another version, with black point shifted to boost contrast, using the 'noir' setting in iPhoto. This successfully darkens the background, without too much loss of detail.

Uploaded: ...

C

Description: This version combines 10 x 120s and 44 x 60s subs to provide ~1 hour integration. I used the life module in Startools to isolate the nebulae and improve the contrast. This 'feels' the most natural, but I'll leave that to your expert judgement.

Uploaded: ...

Altair Astro 183 M/C Hypercams
UK Astro-Imaging
Camera Lens Astrophotography
Only Monochromatic (Black and White!!!!! NO color, please!)
Optolong L-eNhance filter

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	3828278
PixInsight job	FB9CWDQFJKPJDPUQ30UPPPMJCUKTZVZL
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	20h32m33s.7
RA (top/left)	21h12m05s.5
RA (top/right)	19h55m47s.7
RA (bottom/right)	20h01m00s.9
RA (bottom/left)	21h01m10s.8

Dec (center)	+37°44′47″
Dec (top/left)	+45°56′44″
Dec (top/right)	+46°25′10″
Dec (bottom/right)	+28°54′41″
Dec (bottom/left)	+28°32′23″

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