The night sky is full of wonders, some of them most surprising!

Just before the start of summer, I decided it's time to sit down and properly recollimate the newtonian telescope which gives me all the headaches lately. It seems like when you actually sit and screw with the telescope, curious neighbours start asking questions which lead to interesting conversations. But this is not the guest I'm hinting about in the title...

I have decided to target the Tulip nebula solely based on its position for the next months, considering the constraints posed by the block of flats currently lodging us. It's a lovely nebula in my humble opinion, having intricate filaments, superposing tendrils, and a multitude of solar wind-blown structures, complex gravitational and magnetic forces intertwining in a colourful dusty dance. While shooting the emission bands one by one and starting to integrate the initial photos, I wanted to research this object in deeper detail, unbeknownst to me that a monster lies nearby.

You might imagine my surprise when I found out that just several (apparent) arcminutes from my target lies one of the first confirmed black holes, a microquasar named Cygnus X-1. The X-ray binary system which contains the black hole can be found at the bottom-right side of the image, the lower of the two proximate bright stars. While it looks like a normal star, what gives it away in this image is the blue bowshock towards the top of the system (see annotated revision pic). In reality, the proximity of the two objects is relative to our point of view: while the Tulip Nebula is ~6000 light years away, the Cygnus-X1 system is farther away, at ~7300 light-years of distance from us.

Knowing the approximate distance and apparent separation between the microquasar and the tip of the bowshock, we can calculate the actual distance (minimum estimate for face-on situation), which is 7.2E3 * 10.91' = 23.17 ly. This is a huge bowshock.

As such a target requires a closer look, I plan to return to it in the future and provide it with the proper attention such peculiar astronomical obejct deserves.