Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1 shock front (Roger Nichol)

Celestial hemisphere: Northern · Constellation: Cygnus (Cyg) · Contains: 27 b01 Cyg · B144 · B146 · B147 · NGC 6871 · Sh2-101 · The star 27Cyg

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Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1 shock front

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Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1 shock front

Here is the Tulip Nebula and surrounding nebulosity rendered in a blend of HOO and SHO PIP. This was imaged over two nights in August/Sept using the Optolong L-eXtreme filter and IDAS NB3 filter with 20-minute exposures. Stars were replaced by a stack of short images using the L-Pro filter.

A micro-quaser comprised of a star and a small black hole is located just to the left of the Tulip. Relativistic jets, very powerful jets of plasma, with speeds close to the speed of light emanate from the accretion disk of the black hole, creating a shock front in the inter-stellar material - this is observed as the blue arc to the left of the Tulip.

The microquasar star, HDE 226868, and its associated black hole orbit each other in a period of 5.8 days. The black hole has been shown to have a mass of around 15x the mass of our sun and a diameter of only around 45km.

I created both SHO and HOO PIP versions of the image, but neither really appealed to me, so I blended the two using PixelMath to come up with this version.

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Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	4970361
PixInsight job	DIWTJHLT9USFAOXBZ52MCFPOG6V3KZH2
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

RA (center)	20h03m20s.81
RA (top/left)	19h57m07s.78
RA (top/right)	20h08m44s.15
RA (bottom/right)	20h09m40s.49
RA (bottom/left)	19h57m50s.10

Dec (center)	+35°28′41″.9
Dec (top/left)	+34°47′55″.6
Dec (top/right)	+34°32′51″.4
Dec (bottom/right)	+36°08′18″.1
Dec (bottom/left)	+36°23′27″.5

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Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1 shock front

Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1 shock front

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Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1 shock front

Tulip Nebula and Cygnus X-1 shock front

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