Tangled clouds in Cygnus

November 4, 2022

There's a lot going on in this detailed look at one tiny section of the vast network of interstellar dust and clouds of hydrogen in the constellation Cygnus, including the open star clusters NGC 6871, NGC 6883 and a handful of dark nebulae including Barnard 147 (LDN 853, the pointy dark channel of dust a little left of center), B146, LDN 856, 858. Notes: 28 x 8-minute exposures, almost four hours of data in hydrogen-alpha (Antlia 3nm Ha Pro filter), William Optics GT81 Apochromatic refractor 382mm FL at f/4.7, ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro mono camera cooled to -10C.

Cygnus Composite - I combined images from two different scopes, all the data for the wide field view (left) came from my William Optics GT81, and I captured the data for the Tulip Nebula (Sh2-101, right) with the Apertura 8"/203mm Newtonian.